Merchant of Revolution Alexander Israel Helphand Parvus PDF

THE MERCHANT OF REVOLUTION
Alexander Helphand. Drawing by Walter Bondy
THE
MERCHANT OF REVOLUTION
The Life of
Alexander Israel Helphand (Parvus)
1867-1924
Z. A. B. ZEMAN and W. B. SCHARLAU
London
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Toronto
1965
Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4

GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
CAPE TOWN SALISBURY NAIROBI IBADAN ACCRA
KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG
Z. A. B. ZEMAN and W. B. SCHARLAU 1965
Printed in Great Britain

by W. & J. Mackay & Co Ltd,
Chatham, Kent
For F. W. Deakin and E. Lehnartz
Contents
Introduction: The Nature of the Enigma
1. Disengagement from Russia
1
5
2. The Great Fortune
26
3. The Schwabing Headquarters
50
4. St. Petersburg, 1905
75
5. Strategist without an Army
101
6. An Interlude in Constantinople
125
7. Between the Socialists and the Diplomats
145
8. Not by Money Alone
170
9. Business and Politics
192
10. Revolution in Russia
206
11.
235
Dirty Hands
12. Schwanenwerder
260
Epilogue
276
Bibliography
282
Index,
291
List of Illustrations
Alexander Helphand. Drawing by Walter
Bondy
I
II
III
Karl Kautsky, 1905
Frontispiece
facing page 68
Helphand, Trotsky, and Lev Deutsch in the Saints

Peter and Paul Fortress, 1906
69
Helphand and Deutsch on the way to exile in Siberia,

1906
IV Rosa Luxemburg
V a Christo Rakovsky
b Karl Radek, 1924
VI Rosa Luxemburg and Helphand

VII Lenin and his sister
VIII Konrad Haenisch
IX Brockdorff-Rantzau
84
85
132
133
148
149
212
X Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, Gottlieb von

Jagow, and Karl Helfferich, 1915
213
XI Richard von Kuhlmann and Count Czernin, 1917
228
XII
Philipp Scheidemann speaking outside the Reichstag,

1919
229
Preface
This study has grown out of an association of the joint authors
with St. Antony's College, Oxford. They have both enjoyed, at different
times, the hospitality of the College, and they have benefited from its
stimulating international character. The authors are no less indebted
to the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst in Bad Godesberg which
financed, jointly with the College, a two-year scholarship in Oxford.
The Warden of the College and Professor Dr. E. Lehnartz, the President
of the Austauschdienst, have been most understanding and helpful
while the work on this book was in progress, and to them the book is
dedicated.
The authors would also like to thank the Carnegie Trust for the
Universities of Scotland, the Court of St. Andrews University, and the
Landesregierung in Nordhein-Westfalen. Their generous grants made
research in a number of European archives possible.
It is difficult to indicate the gratitude the authors feel towards Professor Dr. Werner Hahlweg of Minister University, and to Dr. George
Katkov of Oxford University, who supervised, with great patience, the
two theses in which preliminary explorations were made. In addition,
the authors have benefited by the advice and help of many scholars,
and they should especially like to mention Professor Sir Isaiah Berlin,
Mr. David Footman, Dr. Michael Futtrell, Professor Dr. Heinz Gollwitzer, Mr. James Joll, Mr. Peter Nettl, Dr. Eberhart Pikart, and
Professor Leonard Schapiro. The authors have also received valuable
information from Helphand's friends and contemporaries, in particular
from Frau Martha Jackh of New York, Dr. Moritz Bonn of London,
Herr Arno Scholz of Berlin, Herr Bruno Schnlank, jun., of Zrich,
and Mr. Satvet Lutfi Tozan, O.B.E., of Istanbul.
This biography, a joint work of a German and a British historian,
appeared in Germany last year. This edition can, however, be regarded
as a separate book rather than as a literal translation of the German
version.
January 1965
W. B. SCHARLAU
Hamburg.
Z. A. B. ZEMAN
St. Andrews,
Scotland.
Introduction:
The Nature of the Enigma

About eight miles due west from the centre of Berlin,
the River Havel broadens into the Wannsee: Schwanenwerder is
the smaller of two islands on the lake. In the nineteenth century
it provided building-sites for the houses of some of the richest
Berlin families; the cooks and butlers were still attending to the
needs of their employers between the two wars. A few large
residences now remain; their private landing-stages are deserted.
From time to time the desolate, shuttered peace of the island is
disturbed by a boatload of tourists who come to inspect the
ruined house that used to belong to Josef Goebbels. But twelve
years before Hitler's Minister of Propaganda acquired his
Schwanenwerder estate, a man who had been one of the first targets of Nazi vituperation had died there. His name was Alexander
Israel Helphand: he died at the sumptuous house on 12 December 1924.
His obituaries lightly glossed over a life of extraordinary

eventfulness. Konrad Haenisch, then Minister of Culture in
Prussia, eulogized Parvushe was better known under this
pseudonym in socialist circlesas the 'ablest head of the Second
International'.1 The liberal Berliner Tageblatt regarded him as a
'knowledgeable man in a class of his own' who, 'without being in
the foreground, exercised a considerable influence'.2 The conservative Kreuzzeitung, on the other hand, saw Helphand as a
man 'completely without character, a morally empty type of a
political and business crook'. The obituary in a communist
magazine, by an erstwhile friend of Helphand, discerned a sharp
break in the life of the deceased man. Before the First World War,
Helphand had been an original thinker, an influential socialist
and revolutionary. But then he sold out; after August 1914 he
1
Parvus, Ein Blatt der Erinnerung, Berlin, 1925, p. 5. 2 13 December 1924.
The Merchant of Revolution
became a traitor to the working class, a German chauvinist, a

corrupt war profiteer.3 Karl Radek, the leading Soviet publicist,
took the same line on Helphand in Pravda, where Radek also
described him as a 'traitor', while pointing out that he had been
'one of the foremost of the revolutionary writers in the era of the
Second International'.4
After his death, Helphand's striking personality and the unique
role he had played in the history of Russia and Germany in the
first two decades of the century sank farther and farther into
oblivion. Admittedly, the restless, uncertain years of the Weimar
Republic that gave way to Hitler's dictatorship and the holocaust
of another war, as well as the conditions that obtained in the
Soviet Union between the wars, were not conducive to dispassionate inquiry into so recent a past. And then, there was something in Helphand's activities that discouraged remembrance and
prevented inquiry.
The German Socialists intermittently remembered him as a
leading Marxist theorist and a brilliant journalist; historians who
concerned themselves with Germany's eastern policy in the First
World War, knew that Helphand had had connexions with
the Imperial German Government, and that he had advised the
Foreign Ministry. It also emerged that he had taken part in the
support, by the government in Berlin, of the revolutionary
movement in Russia, and that he had played some role in connexion with Lenin's famous 'sealed train' journey across Germany
in April 1917. Nevertheless, the politicians and soldiers who knew
the facts preferred to surround the relations between the government and the revolutionary movement in Russia with a conspiracy
of silence.
The memoirs of Bethmann-Hollweg, of Helfferich, Nadolny,
Ludendorff, and Kuhlmann made not a single reference to the
name of Helphand. It was given certain prominence when he
became one of the principal whipping-tops of Nazi propaganda.
As a rich Jew and a Marxist revolutionary, he presented the ideal
target for men like Alfred Rosenberg and Josef Goebbels, who
included him among the ranks of the 'November criminals'the
3
4
Clara Zetkin, in Die Kommunistische Internationale, No. I, January 1925.

14 December 1924.
Introduction: The Nature of the Enigma
enemies of the German people who had destroyed Imperial

Germany and who had opened, on the frontier of Europe, the
flood-gates of Bolshevism. In the Soviet Union, Helphand's name
accompanied that of Trotsky into the limbo of forgetfulness. He
was given an entry in the first edition of the official Soviet
Encyclopedia: but from the second edition he disappeared.
The revelations from the captured archives of the German
Foreign Ministry, soon after the Second World War, made possible at least a partial decoding of the enigma of Helphand's life.
The secret Great War series among these papers contain a large
number of documents concerning Alexander Helphand. He
emerged as the central figure in the conspiratorial connexions
between the Imperial Government and the Russian Social Democrat party, and in particular Lenin's Bolshevik faction of it. The
contention that the Imperial German Government had taken a
great deal of interest in the spread of rebellion in wartime Russia
could now be supported by documentary evidence.5
Indeed, a far-reaching revision of the accepted views of the
First World War resulted from the opening of the Foreign
Ministry's archives. It became apparent that policy-making in
Berlin during the war had been a much more complex process
than had been assumed. At the same time, men who had been
ascribed historical greatness were demoted: the larger-than-life
figures of Wilhelm II, of Ludendorff, or of Hindenburg, disappeared from their pedestals. Claims to historical prominence
were staked on behalf of new men: Alexander Helphand belongs
among them. Nevertheless, our knowledge of his motives and
intentions, as well as of his personality, is still only fragmentary.
The newly available information raised new problems, and
aroused fresh controversies. Behind them the enigma of Helphand's life remained unsolved.
Not that Helphand himself would have disapproved of the
mystifications that followed his death. In a brief apologia pro vita
sua, published in Berlin in 1918, he wrote: 'My life is marked by
G. Katkov, 'German Foreign Office documents on financial support to the Bolsheviks in 1917', in International Affairs, vol. XXXII (April 1956), pp. 181-9; St.
T. Possony, Jahrhundert des Aufruhrs, Munich, 1956; W. Hahlweg (ed.), Lenins
Ruckkehr nach Russland 1917, Leiden, 1957; Z. A. B. Zeman (ed.), Germany and the
Revolution in Russia 1915-1918, London, 1958.
my literary works as with milestones. From one year to another,

one can establish what constituted the focal point of my thinking,
what filled my life at any given time.'6 No potential biographer
could have wished for more misleading advice. Helphand's
written works represent only the surface of the iceberg. He was
obsessed by a desire for secretiveness; he preferred legend to
serve his memory. He took, in the last years of his life, elaborate
precautions to achieve this aim. The case of Philipp Scheidemann's book of reminiscences, Der Zusammenbruch, throws a
sharp light on the manner in which Helphand acted after the war.
Scheidemann was a German Social Democrat leader, and he wrote
the book under Helphand's guidance, while staying at the house
on the Wannsee; when the book appeared, it bore the imprint of
Helphand's publishing house. Although he had been closely
associated with Helphand during the war, Scheidemann did not
once mention his host's name in his reminiscences.
And then shortly after Helphand's death, his son, together
with a number of his friends, searched the Schwanenwerder house
for his political papers. They found nothing. It is very probable
that he had destroyed the documents before his death: only after
the last war was a small collection of Helphand's business documents discovered in Berlin. A considerable number of his papers
must also have been deposited in Copenhagen: a young English
scholar, who recently worked in the archives in the Danish
capital, gained the impression that a mopping-up operation had
been carried out there as well. All this sounds true to form:
secretiveness was the hallmark of Helphand's activities.
For more than three decades after his death, Helphand's determined effort to discourage inquiry into his secret operations
appeared to have been successful. The authors of this biography
often found themselves following false trails; their patience was
severely tested by the peculiar elusiveness of their subject. Nevertheless, they believe that they have deciphered some of the
mystery which Helphand had done his best to create.
6
Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, p. 45.
1
Disengagement from Russia
In 1867the year of Helphand's birthEurope was
still the powerful centre of the civilized world. It was changing,
but not very rapidly. There were trains, but no cars; in the capitals gas was still providing the light, and horses the short-distance
transport; although telegraph was available, there were no
telephones. In this year, a clumsy typewriting machine made its
appearance; Alfred Nobel took out the patent for his new invention, dynamite. In Vienna, Strauss delighted his devoted public
with the latest light-hearted composition, the Blue Danube
Waltz; in London, Karl Marx completed the first volume of his
magnum opus, Das Kapital.
And from now on, the course of the main political developments in Europe was by no means difficult to forecast. The
unification of Germany under Bismarck would soon be completed, and a trial of strength between the new state and France
was a matter of speculation. Austria had been forced to withdraw
from the affairs of both Italy and Germany, but she would soon
find a new interest in the Balkans. Here, the influence of the
Sublime Porte was fast declining: the question was whether
Austria or Russia would fill the gap. Here, sooner or later, the
interests of the two powers would clash.
In the country of Helphand's birth, Alexander II, who had
taken over the management of autocracy after the Crimean War,
was still preoccupied with internal affairs. In Russia, the implementation of his reformsthe emancipation of the serfs in 1861
and the reorganization of local government three years later
left a lot to be desired. These were formidable tasks, the instruments for their accomplishment had proved inadequate, and the
ranks of ill-wishers numerous. Even while the reforming zeal of
the Tsar lasted, it made no serious inroads into the citadels of
M.R.-B
autocracy. In an age when new sections of the hitherto apolitical

masses were forcing their way into the political affairs of the
other European states, when Russia's neighbours to the west,
Germany and Austria-Hungary, were experimenting with constitutions, Russia herself remained an autocracy, without a constitution or a parliament. She was supervised by a corrupt police
force and administered by an inefficient bureaucracy. Together
with the autocrat, graft reigned supreme. The Tsar may have
expected gratitude from his subjects for his edicts of reform;
if he did, he was bitterly disappointed. Karakozov's attempt
on Alexander's life in April 1866 put an end to the era of
reform.
And as reform from above abated, the radicalism of the Russians changed. Alexander Herzen and his generation had shared
the hopeful atmosphere of the fifties and the early sixties; they
had had no use for violence and revolution. These now became
fashionable. Although revolution remained a distant and hazy
goal for the young radicalsonly Bakunin dreamt of it in exile,
uttering, from time to time, the precise date of its outbreak
terrorism became the accepted revolutionary technique. The
repercussions of the terrorists' activities were out of proportion
to their real numbers: the first victims were slain and the first
martyrs of the revolution were created. In 1881 the Tsar himself
was assassinated: his successor, Alexander III, could do no better
than turn his back on the progressive aspects of his father's reign.
Under the guidance of Pobedonostsev, the Tsar's chief adviser,
plans for constitutional reform were shelved; the police force was
strengthened and a stricter censorship introduced; the liberal
university statute of 1863 was repealed. Among these conditions,
radical revolutionary doctrines exercised an ever-growing attraction on the young educated Russians.
Soon, another group was to go through a process, similar to that
of the young radicals, of alienation from the established social
order; this was Russian Jewry. They had lived inside the 'pale'
their settlements in western and south-western Russiain relative peace until the assassination of Alexander II. Their time of
trials began in 1881. They suffered from further discriminatory
legislation from above, and by persecution inflicted from below. It
Disengagement from Russia 7
was tolerated and sometimes even encouraged by the Tsarist

authorities: it deflected the fury of the mob from the genuine
causes of its suffering. The word pogrom passed into the English
language early in this century; it had acquired its frightful connotations in Russia some twenty years before.
There were two periods of violent outbreaks of antisemitic
feeling in Russia, in the years 1881 and 1883, and then again in
1903 and 1906. The pogroms soon developed their characteristic
pattern. The localized disturbance spread like an avalanche; the
mob would methodically proceed from one Jewish street to the
next, from one Jewish shop to another. The property that could
not be stolen was smashed. The pogromsthe revolutionary
movement of the moronic mobdrove many Jews away from
eastern Europe. The exodus to the west, as far afield as the
east end of London, the Bronx in New York, and Palestine,
started soon after the first violence had died down. It was not
surprising that many young Jews who stayed behind in Russia
eventually joined a revolutionary group of one kind or
another.
Israel Lazarevich Helphand was born a Russian Jew, and
became a revolutionary. The place of his birth was Berezino in
White Russia, a small town some ninety miles east of Vilno, in the
province of Minsk. This was the northern part of the "pale',
where the Jews accounted for more than a half of the total population.1 Russians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and Poles made up
the rest of the population of the province. The Jewish community
was self-contained. Barred from political appointments of any
kind and from many of the professions, the Jews were either
tradesmen or artisans; they rarely employed Gentiles, and were
never employed by them. The Jews were mostly literate, but they
could read and write Hebrew only, they spoke Yiddish, and knew
little or no Russian. They led their separate lives: trade and sex
outside marriage were their only links with the Gentile world.
They lived in the past, on their historical memories. The exodus
irom Egypt, Abraham's sacrifice, the occupation of Canaan, these
events were alive for them, and hotly disputed. Such subjects
1
Thecensus of 1897 gave these figures for the province of Minsk: total population
90.879; Jews-49,957.
were more pleasant to think about than the drab, depressing, and
often dangerous present.2
Helphand was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family in
this province on 27 August 1867. There is very little we know
about his descent, his childhood, and youth; even the date of his
birth is likely to be an approximation. After Helphand left Russia,
he had to fill out a number of forms, in Switzerland or in Germany, and 27 August was the date of birth he gave on these. He
also adopted the name of Alexander: it was as Israel Alexander
Helphand that he appeared in the police files of a number of
European countries.
His father was an artisan, perhaps a locksmith or a blacksmith;
we have only one vivid memory from Helphand's childhood on
record. It is an account of a fire at his native town :
A part of the town in which we livedit was a Russian provincial
townburnt down one evening. But at first I, a small boy, knew nothing about it, and continued to play in a corner of the room. The
window-panes acquired a beautiful red glow, I noticed it, and it gave
me pleasure. Suddenly the door was flung open, and I saw the frightened face of my mother, who rushed towards me and who took me,
without saying a word, into her arms, and carried me away. My mother
is running through the street, I am toddling behind her, firmly held by
the arm, stumbling, nearly falling over, puzzled, clueless, but without
any feeling of fear, surprised and looking around with the wide-open
eyes of a child, people running everywhere. They are all carrying beds,
chests, pieces of furniture. We hear hurried, hollow voices. A confusion
of voices in the semi-darkness of the night. I want to look round, but I
cannot, I am being dragged forward too fast. Then we come to an open
space, filled, in two rows, with all kinds of possessions, pieces of furniture, beds, etc. There are some of our things already there. An encampment is built from beds and cushions, and I am sat down there with
strict orders not to move. I was not thinking of doing that anyway:
everything around me is so unusual, fantastic, it came so unexpectedly,
and now I am sitting so snugly among the many soft cushions. The open
space becomes enveloped in darkness. One sees the swaying hand-lamps
cut across it like large will-o'-the-wisps, they approach us or they merge
2
Jehudo Epstein, Mein Weg von Ost nach West, Stuttgart, 1929, p.8 et seq.

into the darkness. At first, one sees a red spot of light in the distance,
then nearer and nearer, a growing circle of light, and behind it vague,
shadowy outlines of people, carriages, large pieces of furniture. The sky
is black, without stars, only in one place a glare can be seen, growing
bigger, striving upwards, it hurriedly reaches out and flares up more
brightly, but soon it draws back and grows dimmer, and then again
the lost territory is quickly reclaimed by the glowing surfaces. Dogs are
howling. But with all this going on I feel secure, so peaceful behind the
entrenchment, among the enormous, white pillows, that I stretch out
and soon doze off, having no notion of the catastrophe that afflicted a
whole town.3
The destruction by fire of the Helphands' house was followed

by their move to Odessa. They had a long way to go for they had
to traverse the whole length of the Ukraine, north to south, before they reached the Black Sea port. The reason for the family's
move may well have been the fact that Odessa was the birthplace
of Helphand's father. In the circle of his friends, young Helphand later fondly remembered his family's Odessa origins, where
his ancestors had been well known for their physical strength
among the Jewish stevedores in the harbour.
At the time of the family's arrival in the south, early in the
eighteen-seventies, Odessa was going through a period of unprecedented prosperity. The town itself was one of the biggest
trading centres of the Empire; in the privileged free port, the
dockers handled large cargoes of Ukrainian grain. Russians,
Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Turks, Tatars, and Persians made up
the colourful crowds in the streets, where rows of tradesmen's
and artisans' houses occasionally gave way to the splendid white
palaces of the rich merchants. The open horizons and the sun,
the proximity of the sea, and the active, prosperous citizens of
Odessa leading an alfresco existence, combined to create the
atmosphere of a Mediterranean town. It did not encourage any
section of its inhabitants to brood and stagnate in isolation: the
Jewish community in Odessa led a life which bore little resemblance to that of the Jews in the northern provinces of the 'pale'.
Most of them could speak Ukrainian or Russian; religious orthodoxy had never been strongly entrenched in the town on the
3
C. Lehmann and Parvus, Das hungernde Russland, Munich, 1900, pp. 172-3.
10
Black Sea, and many Jews there discarded the rigid ritual of their
faith. Some of them belonged among the rich grain merchants, the
vital and explosive figures of Isaac Babel's short stories. Their
strong attachment to life was their main virtue; riches, they knew,
came and went. They found as much satisfaction in the risk and
uncertainties of their business as in the profit they made.
Although the Odessa Jews were not spared the horrors of mob
violence unleashed after the assassination of Alexander II, the
years young Helphand spent at the Black Sea port provided him
with a Russian background. He went to a local gymnasiuma
grammar school that stressed the classical disciplinesand he
also received some private tuition in the humanities before he
went to university. But formal education gave Alexander only
formal qualifications. Influences outside the school were more
decisive for his intellectual development. He returned to them
many years later:
I dreamed under the starry heaven of the Ukraine, listened to the surf
on the shores of the Black Sea. In my memories the songs of the Ukraine
and the fairy tales and other yarns of the master craftsmen from the
central Russian provinces, who visited my father every summer, go
together. Shevchenko was the first to acquaint me with the idea of class
struggle. I was enthusiastic about the haidamaki. Mikhailovski, Schedrin,
and Uspenski played an important role in my further intellectual
development. John S. Mill's book, annotated by Chernyshevski, was the
first work on political economy I ever read.4
Such accomplishments were not taught at Russian schools:

like many other young men of his generation, Helphand had to
acquire them for himself. He learned about class struggle, rather
surprisingly, from Shevchenko, the poet of Ukrainian national
freedom; his imagination was fired by the haidamaki, the peasants
and the cossacks of the Dnieper region who had repeatedly rebelled against Polish domination in the eighteenth century. All
this had specifically local, Ukrainian connexions: the rest of his
spiritual guides Helphand shared with the Russian intelligentsia.
Mikhailovski, the journalist and the founder of an influential
school of thought in sociology; Saltykov-Schedrin, a bureaucrat
4
Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, Berlin, 1918, pp. 4-5.
11
by profession, whose vitriolic satire ridiculed the bureaucracy;

Uspenski, one of the founders, in 1879, of the Narodnaia Volya,
the secret terrorist organization. Such guides showed young
Helphand the path to a reasoned contempt for the Tsarist order.
In addition to the impulses he shared with the Russian intelligentsia, his Jewish background may safely be assumed to have
contributed to the formation of his political attitudes.
At the same time, however, he had to face the first problems
and doubts arising out of his revolutionary faith. What were the
best means of furthering the revolution? Should he dedicate himself to terrorist activity, and follow the example of the Narodnaia
Volya? The party was fast losing its prestige, and was found to
have been riddled with police agents; some radicals had already
started questioning the political effectiveness of terror. 'Going to
the people'in order to establish contact between the intelligentsia and the submerged masses, and to introduce them to
revolutionary ideasappeared, to Helphand, a more attractive
alternative.
He spent the year 1885 together with a friend of his called
Zhargorodski, learning a trade and getting to know the workers.
The two friends became apprenticed to a locksmith, and subsequently they tramped from one workshop to another. The people
Helphand and his friend 'went to' were workers and not peasants,
an indication of the path which his political interests would soon
take. Nevertheless, the year of experiment proved to Helphand
the falseness of his romantic revolutionary enthusiasm; it is unlikely that he received much inspiration from his friend, for
Zhargorodski was a simple, unintellectual young man, a natural
rebel. Only their youth could have obscured the fundamental
differences between the two friends, and their ways soon parted:
Zhargorodski later became a Social Revolutionary, whose contemporaries in Russia knew him as a fat, uninspired journalist
who lived in poverty with his large family, anaesthetized by alcohol.5
In 1886, when he was nineteen years old, Helphand went
abroad for the first time, hoping that 'travel would resolve my
political doubts'.6 Since most of the revolutionary literature was
5
FeliksKon, Za piatdesat let, Moscow, 1936, vol. 3, p. 254.

12
not available in Russia, and many of the revolutionary leaders

lived in exile, there was some justification for the young traveller's
hopes. He went to Switzerland: her placid, orderly towns attracted the discontented Russians. In Zrich the treasures of
revolutionary writings lay open to Helphand; he read with
fervour, beginning with the early books of Alexander Herzen.
Although the young man may have been impressed with what
he read, he certainly was not satisfied. His practical turn of mind
asserted itself. He came to Switzerland immediately after a year
spent among the workers in South Russia, and he knew that very
little of what he was reading was suitable for their enlightenment.
Although he perused all the revolutionary literature he could get
hold of in Zurich, he found 'nothing there for the workers apart
from the book Clever Mechanics and Dickstein's pamphlet'.7 The
Khitraya Mekhanika was a light-weight propaganda handbook,
used especially by the populists; Dickstein's pamphlet had a selfexplanatory title'Who Lives on Whom'. Although young
Alexander was able to explore revolutionary literature during his
first visit to Switzerland, voracious reading did not entirely solve
his doubts. Indeed, the new maze in which he now found himself
was more complex than the one he had left behind him in Russia.
The accumulation of a large body of literature of an unusual kind

was the most striking result of the activities of the Russian intelligentsia during the preceding decades. It raised a large number of
questions, and it gave a bewildering variety of answers. Problems
of the internal development of Russia, of her future, of her place
in the world, were examined and many fields of intellectual
activity were drawn on for illustration and evidence.
And then in the early eighteen-eighties, Marxism entered into
competition for the favours of the Russian intelligentsia. Although
the translation of the first volume of Das Kapital, by Nikolai

Danielsonan economist and one of Marx's correspondents in
Russiahad appeared as early as 1872, Russian Marxism did not
emerge as a movement until some ten years later. In 1882, a year

before his death, Marx wrote the preface to the Russian transla-
tion of his Communist Manifesto of 1848, in which he attempted to

provide an answer to the problem of Russia's future development.
7
ibid., pp. 5-6.
13
He knew that the peasant commune, a form of primitive collective

propertyan institution on which many Russian writers, including Alexander Herzen, had placed high hopeswas being
destroyed, but he was of the opinion that 'if the Russian revolution becomes the signal for the workers' revolution in the West,
so that one supplements the other, then the present form of land
ownership in Russia may be the starting point of a historical
development'.8
Nevertheless, Russia was an uncharted territory for Marx: the
main body of his theories applied to the conditions obtaining in
the highly industrialized countries of western Europe. Russia,
on the other hand, was going through the opening stages of industrial development, and Marx's doctrine, even if correct, was
hardly applicable to her. Why should it then have exercised an
attraction on a considerable section of the Russian intelligentsia?
Why should they have complicated their already difficult lives
with a doctrine unsuited to Russian conditions? First of all,
Marxism was a revolutionary doctrine: although the effectiveness
of revolution as a means of political and social progress was soon
to be questioned even by the Marxist socialists in the West,
revolution remained the Russian radicals' only bright hope.
Marxism also offered them a 'scientific', all-embracing explanation of human society. It had an authoritative, even a propheticring; it claimed to be not only a dispassionate examination of the
past, but a blue-print for the future. It in fact dealt in terms for
which the Russian intelligentsia were prepared by their earlier
radical literature. In addition, Marx examined the kind of society
many Russians wished to construct: the 'westernizers' of an
earlier generation, who maintained that Russia had to follow the
path of western European development, were the intellectual
ancestors of the Russian Marxists. By adopting Marx's doctrines,
the Russians anticipated the development of their country, while
hoping that such a process would provide them with the classical
Marxist revolutionary conditions. They indulged in an interesting
piece of wishful double-thinking.
In 1883, Plekhanov, who had gone into exile three years earlier,
started to expound Marxist doctrine in his pioneering works; in
Communist Manifesto, Moscow, 1959 edition, p. 20.
14
the same year, together with Vera Zasulich, the translator of the
Communist Manifesto, Pavel Axelrod, and Lev Deutsch, he founded the Emancipation of Labour Group, the first Russian
Marxist organization. When Helphand visited Zrich some three
years after its foundation, it was this group of exiles which most
attracted him. He later wrote that a 'programme, which put class
struggle of the proletariat into the foreground, appealed to me'.9
But in the same place he remarked that 'as far as Russia was concerned, I was disturbed by the fact that Plekhanov's programme
had no place for the peasantry; Russia is, whichever way one
looks at it, an agricultural country'. Helphand had become a
Marxist revolutionary: the second remark hinted, however, at a
certain confusion at the back of his mind. He had a personal
decision to make: was it possible to be a Russian Marxist? Was
the description not a contradiction in terms ?
Back in Odessa from his visit to Switzerland, Helphand was
restless and he did not stay there long. In 1887, less than a year
later, he left his native country for a much longer time. He returned after twelve years, for a brief visit; he had started building
a new life for himself abroad.
It is possible that, during his stay in Russia between the two
trips abroad in 1886 and 1887, the police became interested in
Helphand, and that he had to leave for the sake of his personal
safety. On his return journey from Switzerland, he had had his
suitcase searched for illegal literature, and had been subjected to
a thorough personal search on the frontier; a plain-clothes man
had kept him company on the train to Odessa.10 It is certain that
he went through a protracted spiritual and personal crisis at the
time. More important than the problems connected with his
revolutionary faith were those arising from his Jewish background. In the autobiographical fragments scattered among his
later writings, he tended to play down his Jewish origins, and he
never made a single reference to their specific implications in
nineteenth-century Russia. But he must have witnessed the
pogroms of the eighteen-eighties, which reached an especially
violent peak in Kiev and Odessa. Such experiences must have
9
10

G. Lehmann and Parvus, Das hungernde Russland, p. 12.
15
made young Helphand search widely and intently for a solution to his personal problems. As a Jew, he would not have been
able to rise above the inferior rank of second-class citizen.
Nevertheless, the town where he had spent the best part of his
youth made an indelible impression on Helphand. Indeed, the
various aspects of Odessa can be recognized as they unfold themselves in the adventurous Jew's life. The cosmopolitan atmosphere of the town gave him some idea of the infinite variety of
life; its wide horizons meant more than the mere absence of
physical barriers. Odessa was an eastern town, and it was a
trading town. In his later travels Helphand rarely crossed the
Rhine on his way farther west. He came to lead a wandering life,
but within certain limits. France, England, and America, the lives
and aspirations of their peoples, the political traditions of these
countries, remained a closed book to him. In central Europe
inside the vast quadrilateral area demarcated by St. Petersburg
and Constantinople, Copenhagen and ZrichHelphand felt at
home. And when he set out on the road to becoming a rich man,
he did so in the manner of the Odessa merchants: grain trade
along the shores of the Black Sea was the foundation of his
financial success.
On his return to Switzerland in 1887, Helphand started to
shed his former Russian and Jewish identity, discarding his purely
Russian revolutionary interests, and turning towards the study
of political and economic developments farther west. Helphand
himself tells of a characteristic incident which happened to him
shortly after his arrival in Switzerland. Plekhanov asked him to
write an article on Belinski, the famous Russian literary critic of
the first half of the nineteenth century; Helphand refused to do
so, because, in his own words, he was then 'busy with problems of
labour legislation and state monopoly'. Plekhanov used the
opportunity to admonish young Helphand: 'Do you know what?
First of all, you must honour your own national literature.'11
Such patriotic sentiments fell on barren soil. Helphand
thought he had more important problems than articles on old-
fashioned literary critics to tackle. He felt a desire to get away

from the life of the Russian exiles, which could hardly have
11
16
agreed with his mood at the time. He did not settle down in one
of the main exile centres, but went farther afield, and, at the
beginning of the autumn term in 1888, he entered the University
of Basle. The atmosphere of the quiet bourgeois town on the
Rhine agreed with his studious mood, and with the exception of
one term in the summer of the following year, for which he transferred to Berne, Helphand spent all his university years in Basle.
Its reputation commended Basle to the young man. Jacob
Burckhardt, the historian of the Renaissance, Friedrich Nietzsche,
the philosopher of the superman, and Alphonse Thun, the
author of one of the first studies of the Russian revolutionary
movement, had taught there. But when Helphand came to Basle,
it was Professor Bucher who struck an especially modern note in
his lectures. He had taught at the University of Dorpat before he
came to Basle early in the eighteen-eighties; at the Swiss university he lectured on political economy and its history. He was
careful to relate his academic discipline to contemporary economic and political problems; he gave his pupils the benefit of his
experience as a journalisthe had worked for the Frankfurter
Zeitungand tried to instil into them a regard for hard facts and
an abhorrence of empty theorizing.
He exercised a strong influence on Helphand. Political
economyHelphand's main subject at Baslewas still an unestablished academic discipline. The conservatives among
the university teachers disapproved of it because it 'adversely
affected legalistic thinking'.12 Although the warning may have
influenced Swiss students, it had no effect on the young Russians.
Bucher's lectures dealt with subjects which concerned the Russians most intimately: the fundamental principles of political
economy, questions of contemporary economic development, and
especially the problems of capitalism and socialism. Such a syllabus exactly corresponded to the demands Helphand made on a
university education. Biicher taught him the value of precise
statistical analysis: later, Helphand's Marxism always contained
a certain empirical element. Marx was for him a teacher and guide
rather than a fountain-head of preconceived ideas.
Helphand's four years at the Swiss university were by no
12
Karl Bucher, Lebenserinnerungen, 1847-1890, Tubingen, 1919, vol.
1, p. 325.
means carefree. Acquaintance with the police and the censor, the
pogroms and the terrorist societies, made the Russian students
impervious to the light-heartedness and youthful navet of their
more fortunate Swiss colleagues. The Russians were nave,
but in a different way. They thought of their studies as a kind
of preparatory course for the revolution; they were neither
interested in a vocational training, nor were they preparing to
become gentlemen. One of Helphand's contemporaries observed
that if the Swiss students had any problems at all, they were
connected either with money or with sex, with 'accounting and
marriage'.13 To the Russian students, on the other hand, such
difficulties did not apply. Most of them lived in acute poverty and
they knew that, below a certain minimum of income, accounting
did not pay; a middle-class marriage was out of the question for
them. There was no prospect of ordered lives before them, and if
there were, they would have considered it humdrum and dull
in comparison with their main preoccupations. The Russian
students were busy with problems they thought more important
the future of the world, Russia's place in it, her future developmentsuch were the most popular subjects of their endless,
meandering conversations. The attics of bourgeois houses in
Swiss university towns became the nurseries of future revolutionary leaders, who were already starting to disturb the nocturnal repose of middle-class society.
Helphand learned nothing from his Swiss colleagues: the
Russian way of life was much more congenial to him, and until
the end of his life he preserved a keen distaste for bourgeois
values.
But the doubts and questions which he had brought with him
from Russia on his first visit to Zrich were finally resolved. The
youthful, romantic admirer of the haidamaki became converted,
under the influence of Karl Marx, into a rational, orthis was
then the fashionable descriptiona 'scientific' socialist. Marx
gave him a clear insight into the world of politics; the uncertainties of an erstwhile sympathizer of the Narodnaia Volya were
replaced by the self-confidence of a Marxist.
His newly acquired self-confidence was reflected in his
13
F.Brupbacher, 60 Jahre Ketzer, Zrich, 1935, p. 53.
18
academic work. In the Michaelmas term of 1890 he started, on

Bucher's advice, to write a thesis on the problem of the division of
labour. It gave him an opportunity to apply Marxist methods to a
concrete piece of research. Within six months he was able to put
his ideas on paper. The historical part of the study dealt with the
views on the distribution of labour expressed by the classical
writers on political economy: Helphand examined in detail
the theories of Adam Smith, Wakefield, and John Mill; he
reserved, nevertheless, many more pages for the consideration of
Marx's views. The conceptual framework of Helphand's study
also pointed to the economist to whom Helphand felt himself
most indebted: 'the suppression, or, to use a blunt but descriptive modern word, the exploitation of the massesslaveryis
the basis of the division of labour.'14 AndMarx's ideas also inspired
the young student to offer a suggestion which, he thought, would
do away with the disadvantages of the advancing division of
labour: 4There exist special circumstances that counter these
harmful influencesmainly the organization of the working class
and the awakening class consciousness.'15
By the time Helphand completed his study in the summer of
1891 an important change had occurred in his faculty. Bucher
had left for Karlsruhe and was replaced by Professor Kozak, of
the Zrich Polytechnic. Kozak had no sympathy for Helphand's
Marxist approach: he approved the draft of the thesis only after
some revision. Helphand then had a rough passage at his viva
voce examination; in addition, he did not distinguish himself in
his subordinate subjects, mineralogy and physics. On 8 July 1891
he was granted his doctorate, but with a rather disappointing
riderritethe equivalent of a third-class degree. The University of Basle, Helphand must have perceived, was a 'scientific'
but not a socialist institution; it may even have been classconscious, but it certainly was not proletarian.
In the future, Israel Alexander Helphand, Doctor of Philosophy, would never again have his Marxist studies considered by
a board of solemn academics. From now on, he would write for
14
15
I. Helphand, Technische Organisation der Arbeit ('Cooperation' und 'Arbeitsteilung'), Eine

kritische Studie, Fil. Dis., Basle, 1891, p. 50.
ibid., p. 72.
19
the audience of the European proletariat: it might show a greater

understanding for his exertions than did the bourgeois professors
of Basle University.
When he finished his studieshe was then twenty-three years
oldHelphand was faced with the most important decision of
his life. Should he return to Russia and help to organize the
working class there? Or should he stay in Switzerland with the
revolutionary Russian exiles? Or should he shed his Russian
identity, and join one of the western European workers' parties?
He had no desire to return to Russia: there was nothing there
to attract him. He felt an aversion towards her backwardness,
perhaps even towards the harshness of her native people. He had
seen western Europe, and was impressed by its material and
spiritual achievements. He had written his first study in German,
and Germany was for himas for many other Jews from the
Eastthe key to western Europe. This aversion of Helphand's
to Russia was still more intense in regard to the Russian exiles,
and it made the second possibilitynamely to join one of their
groupsalso distasteful to him. He thought of them as a dead
branch, cut off from the living body of the people. They lived in
a world of shadows, where theory became a substitute for reality
and talk replaced action. About this young Helphand had felt
strongly at the very outset of his studies: in 1887 he avoided
Geneva and Zrich, the main marshalling-grounds of the exiles;
he went to outlying Basle instead. He retained his distrust of the
Russian intelligentsia, isolated from the masses, until the end of
his life.
It was the last choiceto join a west European working-class
movementthat Helphand was prepared to consider seriously.
In this way he could both serve socialism and earn a living. As a
Marxist, he knew that there existed a profound difference between the revolutionary struggle in western Europe and in
Russia: whereas constitutional and civil liberties were still the
main object of the revolution in Russia, western Europe had
arrived at this stage of development in 1848, or, at the latest, in
1871. The workers in the West had a socialist aim before them,
namely, the overthrow of capitalism and the introduction of a
socialist economic order. And in Helphand's view, Germany was
20
the country most advanced on the path to socialism; the Germans

were running the best organized workers' movement in Europe.
Helphand was convinced that the world revolution, which would
emancipate the proletariat everywhere, would be decided in
Germany: the class struggle in Berlin was of much greater importance to him than the opposition against Tsarism in Russia.
Alexander Helphand was the first emigrant to decide to give
his full loyalty and support to a socialist organization in western
Europe. He thus became the predecessor of a number of wellknown socialists who made their names before the outbreak of the
Great War: Rosa Luxemburg, Julian Marchlewski, and Karl
Radek in Germany, Charles Rapaport in France, and Angelica
Balabanoff in Italy. None of Helphand's successors identified
themselves with their adoptive parties as fully as he did.
But it should be said at once that his break with the Russian
revolutionary movement was not as clean as Helphand himself
later chose to remember. Although, until the turn of the century,
he took no direct part in the movement, the personal contacts
with the exiles he had established in Switzerland kept him in
touch with Russian affairs for three decades to come. He might
look down at the political achievements of the exiles: he would,
however, always value highly the personal contacts with his
Russian and Polish friends.
He regarded Plekhanov as too academic, 'classical', and vain.
He was much more impressed by the selfless and retiring manner
of Pavel Borisovich Axelrod, the benign patron of a whole
generation of Russian revolutionaries. Helphand also admired
Vera Zasulich, the romantic heroine of the Narodnaia Volya., an
eccentric and motherly person, who affectionately called young
Helphand 'the seal'. Lev Deutsch appealed to the adventurous
streak in Helphand: Deutsch had developed the technique of
escaping from Tsarist prisons into a fine art: he was a kind of
revolutionary Odysseus, whose resourcefulness was surpassed
only by his desire for action.
Apart from the older generation of the Russian revolutionary
leaders, Helphand also became acquainted with a group of Polish
students in Switzerland, who later came to play important roles
in the history of European socialism. Julian Marchlewski, Rosa
21
Luxemburg, Leo Yogiches, and Adolf Warszawski-Warski lived

in Zrich at the time, where they were studying political economy. Marchlewskiwho later used the pseudonym of Karski
and Rosa Luxemburg came to figure prominently in Helphand's
life.
Late in the summer of 1891, Helphand left Basle for Germany.
It was a prosperous and hopeful country that he decided to make
his home. Yet in his own view, his decision had somewhat narrower implications: he wanted German Social Democracy, and
not Germany as a whole, to receive him. He had no sympathy for
the conservative, aristocratic, and absolutist side of his adopted
country; he gave little thought to the question of how much of a
German he would have to become by becoming a German Social
Democrat. As a Marxist, he could perhaps play down the national
element involved in his decision; he later wrote: 'Whether
Russian or German, the struggle of the proletariat always remains
the same, and it knows neither national nor confessional differences.' And he added: 'When I became unfaithful to my native
Russia, I also became unfaithful to that class from which I
originated: the bourgeoisie. My parting of company with the
Russian intelligentsia dates from that time.'16
The party which received Helphand into its ranks had existed
for sixteen years. The policy of repression of the socialist movement that had been initiated by Bismarck in the early eighteenseventies had drawn the two main streams of German socialism
together: at the Gotha congress in 1875 the Lassalliansthe
older, non-Marxist movementmerged with Liebknecht's Social
Democrats, who, in the following years, consolidated their leading
role in the party. Bismarck's anti-socialist laws lapsed in 1890:
from a period of rigorous chicanery, the party emerged unscathed.
By then, German socialism had acquired its characteristic
features. Belonging to the party did not only imply adherence to
a certain set of political beliefs; it was a way of life. Social Democracy claimed to look after its members from birth until death and
it demanded, in return, their undivided loyalty. A similar demand
was made by the Prussian State and the Catholic Church: the
three-cornered fight was complicated and hard, and the resulting
16

M.R.-c
22
tensions were reflected inside the party itself. At a party congress,

Vollmar, the leader of the Bavarian socialists, was accused by one
of his comrades of not really understanding the struggle of the
working class because he was a wealthy man; the accusation that
a party member was 'in the pay of the state' was a serious and
frequently used charge. The Social Democrat leadership became
largely a lower middle-class preserve; the attitudes and morality
of this class dominated the organization. It was run primarily for
the benefit of the German workers; only lip-service was paid to
the international brotherhood of the proletariat'. Nor did the
party have any great interest in foreign policy or in developments
outside Germany. It was parochial but dedicated, with limited
horizons, but confident.
Stuttgart was Helphand's first stop. The local party organization enjoyed, at this time, a special position in the socialist movement; it was a suitable jumping-off ground for a socialist career
in Imperial Germany, and it received the young Russian with
great sympathy. It was dominated by two socialists of consequence : Karl Kautsky and Clara Zetkin.
Nothing very kind is written about Kautsky nowadays. He is
generally regarded as an eclectic and a popularizer of ideas,
who could seldom call a thought his own. He of course wrote
too much, too dryly and didactically; Kautsky the politician
and writer faithfully reflected Kautsky the petit bourgeois, the
dispirited patriarch, who seemed to have been born already
old. But when Helphand first met him, Kautsky, together with
Friedrich Engels, was a leading ideologist of European socialism.
And after the death of Engels, Kautsky, as his friend and heir,
achieved a position of power such as only a few socialists might
since have claimed. He was the pope of socialism, a kind of oracle
of the approaching revolution. He had devoted admirers among
the working class, and he profoundly influenced the young
socialist intelligentsia. As the editor of the leading theoretical
organ of the party, the Neue Zeit, he carefully tended journalistic
talent: he was the foster-parent and mentor to a generation of
young socialist writers and theorists in the whole of Europe. His
house was an editorial office, a university, a school of journalism,
a meeting-place for socialists who came to learn and talk there.
Kautsky recognized talent when he encountered it, and he

opened the gate for Helphand to German party journalism. As
early as the end of 1891, Neue Zeit published his first contributions signed 'Ignatieff' or initialled 'I.H.': a review, an essay on
Bohm-Bawerk's theory of the accumulation of capital, and another one on the position of Jewish workers in Russia.
Clara Zetkinthe other leading light of the Stuttgart party
organizationalso helped the young man. This acid, embittered,
socialist suffragette was not to be outdone by Kautsky in kindness. As the head of the socialist women's societies she ran her
own magazine, Gleichheit. Helphand wrote for it, and its fees
contributed to his meagre income.
But it hardly covered his day-to-day needs. His appearance
was pitiful; his trousers came down in shreds to the troddendown heels and he wore an oily, second-hand working man's cap.
He gave the impression of extreme poverty. Yet he made an
indelible impression on his German comrades: he was an exotic
phenomenon among them. In the tatty clothes there was a powerful body, supported by rather short legs: his head was solid, with
a high forehead, further enlarged by the beginnings of premature
baldness. Karl Kautsky's children called their father's Russian
friend 'Dr. Elefant' (this, and not helfende Hand, was incidentally, the etymological origin of his name): there was indeed a
certain heavy, powerful formlessness about his appearance. He
was exuberant, larger than life, and used striking, angular
gestures when he spoke: his vitality was somewhat overpowering.
By the end of 1891, Stuttgart had become too small for him.
He wanted to go to Berlin, and Kautsky gave him the introductions he needed. His arrival at the nerve-centre of German politics and commerce did not improve his material circumstances.
He took a cheap room in a working-class district in North Berlin,
and from there he had to walk several miles to the editorial offices
of Vorwrts, the main daily organ of the party, in Beuthstrasse,
carrying his contributions to the newspaper in his pocket. He
could afford neither the tram fare nor the postage.
Nevertheless, he made a successful start in his career as a
journalist. All the most important party newspapers and periodicals printed articles by him; in 1892 he received a commission
24
from Vorwrts to write a series of articles on the famine in Russia.

The examination of the Russian famine, following the catastrophic harvest of 1891, was his first major success in socialist
journalism.17 His German comrades were not accustomed to the
presentation of a well-informed analysis of the foreign scene:
Helphand's views sounded convincing, and the Social Democrats
accepted themas they were to do on many later occasionsas
authoritative and above question.
Helphand did not regard the famine as an accident, but rather
as a 'chronic illness of long standing'. The emancipation of the
serfs in the eighteen-sixties had transformed Russia into a producer of goods, and she was now undergoing the transition from
simple to complicated forms of production. The peasantry would
supply the necessary reserve of labour for the fast development of
a modern industry in Russia: the place of the impoverished
peasants, who had so far acted as a reliable support of the Tsarist
regime, would be taken by the rising bourgeoisie. Nothing could
be expected, Helphand wrote, of the Russian middle class in the
way of political progressthe freedom to enrich itself would
become essential for this class, and it could be guaranteed only
under the established order. The proletariat was, Helphand

informed his readers, the only reliable revolutionary force in
Russia.
So far, Helphand's reasoning was similar to that of Friedrich Engels and Georg Plekhanov, who also concerned themselves
with the famine. But in his conclusions, Helphand went much
farther than either of the two older men. Engels concluded that
the weakening of Russia would mean safety for Europe; Plekhanov described the famine as a 'prologue' to the rise of the
workers' movement in Russia. Helphand, on the contrary,
thought in much larger dimensions, in terms of decades and continents. He was not misled by temporary set-backs in Russia: he
forecast rapid progress in industry and in agriculture; in some
ten or fifteen years the country would flourish in, of course, the
capitalist sense. Europe would thus find itself pushed out from
its position of economic hegemony by Russia and by America.
The resulting competition would bring about, in Germany, an
17
Four articles entitled 'Die Lage in Russland', printed in Vorwrts in June 1892.
increase in the price of corn: the European proletariat should be

prepared for a period of sharp wage disputes.
Helphand's articles on Russia contained two points which
later appeared in the key places of his thinking: the position of
Europe between the two great capitalist powers, Russia and
America, and the lack of revolutionary enthusiasm of the Russian
bourgeoisie.
In a postscript to his earlier series of articles,18 Helphand made
his first contribution to the relations between the Russian and
the German socialists. Until this intervention, the German
socialists had regarded the narodnikithe decaying populist
revolutionary movementas the embodiment of progressive
forces in Russia. Helphand demonstrated to his comrades the
error of their ways. He was highly critical of the populists, and he
pointed to the Marxist Emancipation of Labour Group, placing it
firmly among the European working-class movements. His arguments made a profound impression on the German party. The
contributions of the two narodniki correspondents to Vorwrts,
Lavrov and Rusanov, ceased to appear in the pages of the Social
Democrat organ; in December 1892, the newspaper printed an
open letter from Plekhanov to Liebknecht, the first piece written
by a Russian Marxist ever to appear in the newspaper.
Nevertheless, the Prussian police became interested in the
young man before his name became familiar to the German
socialists. The Ministry of the Interior closely followed his literary
activities; the file of press-cuttings of his articles was growing
fast. As early as the beginning of 1893 his presence in the capital
appeared so dangerous to the Prussian officials that heas an
undesirable alienwas served with a police order to leave Berlin.
Prussia was not to remain the only federal State where Helphand was accorded this kind of treatment.
'Die Sozialdemokratie in Russland', Vorwrts, 23 September 1892.
2
The Great Fortune
For two years after he had been expelled from Berlin,
Helphand led the life of a wandering socialist scholar. He travelled between Dresden and Munich, Leipzig and Stuttgart, with
occasional expeditions to Zrich where his Polish friends,
Marchlewski and Luxemburg, were always ready to listen eagerly
to the descriptions of his experiences in Germany. He travelled
light, frequently, and invariably third class.
But despite the way he lived, his position in the German party
was full of promise. Apart from his qualifications as an economist,
he possessed an intimate knowledge of foreign countriesan
unusual accomplishment among the German socialists; he was a
polyglot writer and journalist, which made it possible for him to
consult, in the original, the publications that concerned his
special interests. He found it easy to place his pieces in the socialist press: his theoretical studies in Neue Zeit were regarded as
highly as his occasional articles in the daily press. Karl Kautsky
was so favourably impressed by his new, still only twenty-sixyear-old contributor, that he recommended him to his Austrian
comrades as a correspondent for their main organ, the Vienna
Arbeiterzeitung. In a letter to Viktor Adler, a highly intelligent
and sophisticated doctor, now leader of the Austrian Social
Democrats, Kautsky wrote:
'Here we have a Russian, Dr. Helphand, who has spent six
years in Germany, a very shrewd chap . . . who attentively follows German developments and who has good judgement. . . .
He is living in Stuttgart, because he has been expelled from
Berlin. He would like best to become naturalized in Austria, in
order to be able to join the movement openly. His naturalization
in Germany is out of the question, since his deportation order.
The Great Fortune 27
The party would gain in him an excellent, well-trained worker.

Do you regard naturalization as possible?'1
In his letter to Adler, Kautsky mentioned the problem that
very much occupied Helphand at the time: the question of his
naturalization in Germany or Austria. It mattered little to him
whether it was to be Prussia, Wurttemberg, Bavaria, or Austria,
that would grant him the rights of a citizen. Before he moved to
Stuttgart he had written from Switzerland to Wilhelm Liebknecht,
editor-in-chief of Vorwrts: 'I am looking for a fatherland, where
can one get a fatherland cheaply?'2
His enthusiasm for German Social Democracy made him overestimate the actual political influence of the Berlin party executive. Instead of gaining Prussian citizenship, he was expelled from
Prussia: the negotiations in Vienna, in spite of Viktor Adler's
help, led to nothing; another attempt in 1896, this time in
Wiirttemberg, also brought no success. Until the First World
War, Helphand, in fact, had no defence against the German
police. And when, in February 1916, he finally became a Prussian
citizen, it was in circumstances that the young revolutionary
could hardly have foreseen in 1893.
In spite of the uncertainty of his legal position, Helphand
vigorously participated in the political discussions then taking
place in Germany. In this respect, no reserve or carefulness was
apparent in his behaviour. His German comrades were often
astonished by the uninhibited and self-confident manner in
which he conducted his public polemics; he made his mark as an
outspoken and independent young revolutionary.
The German socialists were treated to a preview of Helphand's assertiveness when, in October 1893, he put forward his
views on the elections to the Prussian Diet in the Neue Zeit. As
an expression of their disapproval of the three-tier suffrage, the
Social Democrats had never taken part in the Prussian elections,
and for a long time this practice was allowed to continue unchallenged. Finally, before the elections in 1893, a distinguished
voice condemned the socialist attitude to the Diet. Eduard Bernstein, then living in exile in London, was, together with Engels
1
V. Adler, Briefwechsel mit August Bebel und Karl Kautsky, Vienna, 1954, p. 182.
2
ImKampf um die Wahrheit, p. 7.
28
and Kautsky, a member of the Marxist ideological triumvirate.

An inquiring thinker, he was one of the least dogmatic of the
party theorists. Bernstein suggested that, despite their customary
attitude, the socialists should take part in the forthcoming
Prussian elections: he pointed out that abstention was far
from being an effective political weapon. The socialists should
lay aside their objections to, in Bismarck's words, 'the poorest of
all election systems', and take part in the elections.
Bernstein's suggestions were not well received in Germany.
The Neue Zeit wrote that 'it might work, but it doesn't'; Vorwrts
clearly attached to their demonstration of moral disapproval: like
Bernstein, Helphand was unimpressed by this show of sentimentality. Under the pseudonym Unus he made a plea, in the
Neue Zeit, in support of Bernstein's suggestions. His article was
in fact a sermon to his comrades on the importance of the Diet,
which controlled justice and the budget of the Prussian State.
Such an influential institution could not be, according to Helphand, left at the mercy of the reactionary parties. He realized that
the political influence of the socialist fraction would be small; but
the socialists could use the Diet as an agitation platform. 'The
enlightenment of the masses can be achieved by action, by political activity, by social struggle.'3 As far as Helphand was concerned, inactivity and reserve were quite unsuitable as means to
conduct the class struggle.
The German socialists who read the attack on their sacrosanct practice in the Neue Zeit were puzzled by the identity of the
person behind the pseudonym. Who would dare, they asked,
support Bernstein's heresies, after the party had made its mind
up in such a unanimous manner? But before the pseudonym was
deciphered, Helphand was ready for another foray.
In the summer of 1894 the socialists in the Bavarian Diet, led
by Georg von Vollmar, decided to support the government's
budget proposals. Once again, a tradition of the party was about
to be challenged: to withhold support for the budget was generally regarded as a demonstration against the established order.
Helphand thought the incident important enough to release a

3
Unus, 'Die preussischen Landtagswahlen, Neue Zeit, 1893-4, vol. 2, p. 44.
broadside against his comrades in Bavaria. Again, he signed the

article with a pseudonym: this time it was Parvus. It remained
with Helphand until the end of his life. As Parvus he would be,
from now on, praised and disapproved of, attacked and admired.
But when the first article by Parvus appeared, the German socialists realized that they could not afford to ignore the name in
future.
Helphand's article in the Neue Zeit on support for the Bavarian
budget shocked the party out of its complacency. 'Not a single
man and not a single penny', Helphand proclaimed on the
question of support for the regime. 'Support for the budget is
equivalent to the support of the predominant political order,
because it would make available the means for the maintenance
of this order.'4
Opposition to the budget proposals was, according to Parvus,
the most powerful 'means of parliamentary struggle' at the disposal of the partythe best way of expressing its oppositional
standpoint. He could not understand how support for the budget
could be wrong in theory but right in political practice. 'When
one is no longer able to reconcile theory and practice, to deduce
practice from theory . . . it is a certain sign that something is
wrong with the one or the other side.'5
This article by Parvus set off a discussion inside the socialist
movement which continued, intermittently, until the outbreak of
war. Did support for the budgeteven when it brought substantial concessions from the governmentmean a compromise with
the established order, or was it merely a part of the give and take
of political life? Was it opportunism or political wisdom? The
party was unable to find an answer acceptable to all its regional
organizations. Parvus thus opened a wound which it was impossible to heal. The following party congress at Frankfurt in 1894
witnessed the first debate of principle in regard to this question:
it was an inconclusive engagement. As Helphand had no mandate
to the congress, Fritz Kundert, a delegate from the Halle constituency, had undertaken to speak on Helphand's behalf, and to
4
Parvus, 'Keinen Mann und keinen Groschen, Einige Betrachtungen uber das
bayerische Budget', Neue Zeit, 1894-5, vol.
1, p. 81.
ibid., p. 86.
30
lead the attack against Vollmar and the Bavarians. The majority
of the delegates preferred, however, to withdraw into a position of
neutrality, and the result of the fight remained undecided. Parvus
won no victory, but he had made a name for himself.
Bruno Schnlank, editor-in-chief of the socialist Leipziger
Volkszeitung, read the article by Parvus with great interest.
Schnlank, a man with artistic leanings, had a liking for eccentrics; he discerned in Parvus the kind of talent he needed on his
newspaper. From Leipzig, Schnlank had initiated a journalistic
revolution: from a rather ponderous vehicle for socialist agitation
he attempted to transform the Volkszeitung into a modern daily
newspaper, which would capture its readers' interest and inform
them, in a swift and comprehensive manner, of current events.
Such an experimentit in fact meant that Schnlank entered
into competition with the bourgeois presswas viewed by the
party with consternation. Only many years later, when the
Leipzig experiment could be regarded as a success, did other
German socialist newspapers follow Schnlank's pioneering
policy.
At the beginning of 1895, Schnlank was convinced that he
had found a suitable assistant in Helphand. He invited the young
man to come to Leipzig as an editor of the Volkszeitung. Helphand
could not afford to turn the offer down: it meant a secure position
in German journalism, a position from which he could better
influence the politics of the party.
Schnlank was not disappointed. The young immigrant from
Russia soon proved his ability as a journalist. The articles he
wrote for the Volkszeitung did not lack in substance or conviction;
the political analysis contained in them was far-reaching, interlaced with considerations of principle; they were based on sound
facts, and their argument moved effortlessly. Schnlank also
liked Helphand as a person. Their conversations which could not
be finished in the editorial offices in the evening were usually
wound up, late at night over a glass of wine, at the Thuringer
Hof. Helphand's zest for work appeared to have no limits. After a
sleepless night he was back at his desk early in the morning, fresh
and ready for another day. The early months of the friendship
between Schnlank and Helphand were almost idyllic: the calm
of their relationship was suddenly broken, by a difference of

opinion on a matter of principle, late in the summer of 1895.
Together with Georg von Vollmar, Schnlank had suggested,
at the 1894 party congress, that a committee should be set up to
formulate a programme of agrarian agitation in the coming year.
Vollmar and Schnlank believed that the Social Democrats should
look after the interests of the small peasants, and draw the rural
population into their organization.
Schnlank became a member of the committee which was set
up at the congress: before it properly embarked on its deliberations, Engels published, in the Neue Zeit, a forceful warning
against the possibility of ideological misconceptions in the
agrarian question. Engels reminded the German socialists that
the progressive concentration of industrial and agricultural
propertythe trend towards large economic units forecast by
Marxwould eventually destroy the small peasants. The custodian of the great fortune of Marxist inheritance appeared reluctant to see the German socialists formulate a tactical line in
regard to the party's agitation in the countryside: he elegantly
avoided the issue by his proposal that the party should do nothing
for the peasants.
Karl Kautsky and Viktor Adler were outspoken in their condemnation of any attempt to look after the peasants; Eduard
David, on the other hand, a former teacher from the wine-growing
district of the Rhine, supported the necessity of a constructive
agrarian programme. Among the committee, opinion was equally
divided. Its findings took the form of a compromise which satisfied no one. Bebel, who had taken a mildly orthodox position,
complained to Kautsky of a 'bastardization' of the party programme. He asked Kautsky to put the committee's findings,
without any regard to the comrades who had worked them out,
'under a magnifying glass and edit them'.6
Before Kautsky was able to take up Bebel's suggestion, Parvus
launched, from Leipzig, a ruthless campaign against the supporters of the agrarian programme. Although Schnlank intended
to recommend the committee's findings to the party, he was
broadminded enough to allow Helphand to examine them in the
6
A letter from A. Bebel to K. Kautsky, 11 July 1895, Kautsky-Archiv.
32
columns of his newspaper. The young man did not regard the
editor's magnanimity as a sufficient reason for restraint on his
own part.
Helphand's series of articles treated the committee's findings
as a worthless scrap of paper. If the party adopted the improvement of the existing order as its task, he wrote, 'for what purpose
then the social-revolutionary struggle?'7 A social revolution
should be the aim of the party, and not 'petty reforms'. Helphand's main charge against the findings of the committee was
that they were unrealistic and unpractical, because they were not
revolutionary enough.
On the whole, Helphand's views corresponded with those of
the majority of his comrades who attended the party congress in
Breslau in 1895. After three days of heated debate, the congress
rejected the programme of the agrarian committee. Nevertheless,
the decision made in Breslau did not satisfy the young man in
Leipzig. There seemed to be no end to his acid comments in the
Volkszeitung and in the Neue Zeit. Even the patient and broadminded Schnlank could not stand such overpowering fanaticism.
He saw no other way of stopping his assistant's tirades, than to
fire Helphand, which he finally did.
This might well have been a serious set-back to the young
man's career. Fortunately, the Dresden socialists were at the time
looking for a new editor-in-chief for their financially ailing
Schsische Arbeiterzeitung. They needed a man like Parvus: they
wanted to appoint to the office someone who could put the newspaper on a sound financial basis. Parvus accepted the offer. He
was fully compensated in Dresden for his swift exit from Leipzig.
Until the spring of 1896 the Arbeiterzeitung had been edited by
Georg Gradnauer, who then joined Vorwrts in Berlin. The rest
of the editorial board stayed behindEmil Eichhorn, who became head of the Berlin police force during the revolution of
1918, was one of its members. When Helphand took over the
direction of the newspaper, Dr. Julian Marchlewski, his Polish
friend from Switzerland, came to help him: Helphand also
secured contributions from young Rosa Luxemburg, whose first
7
The series of articles was published in the Leipziger Volkszeitung on 18, 19, 22, 24,
31 July, and on 1 and 2 August 1895.
The Great Fortune
33
articles in the German party press appeared in the Dresden

newspaper.
First of all, Helphand gave his attention to the state of the
paper's finances. In order to make the newspaper profitable, he
contemplated the acquisition of its own printing-presses; but the
credit he asked for was too high, and the party executive in
Berlin turned down his request; the leaders there liked the
provincial press to look after itself, without making demands on
the central exchequer. Only the Berlin Vorwrts was in a privileged position, and Wilhelm Liebknecht, its chief editor, did his
utmost to maintain it.
Helphand was undeterred by the refusal from the party executive; he secured an offer of help from the trade unions. Their
generous credit, together with some private contributions,
provided enough capital for the purchase of a printing-press for
the newspaper. And success was not long in coming: as Parvus
had calculated, the finances of the newspaper soon improved to
such an extent that its balance-sheet began to show a small profit.8
As far as editorial policy and the make-up of the newspaper
were concerned, Helphand was much less successful. His temper
and harshness made co-operation with his editorial board a
delicate problem: his conflicts with them often just stopped short
of physical violence. The situation eventually became so strained
that Helphand moved to Stuttgart, from where he tried to guide
the editorial policy of the paper.
Even its make-up reflected the editor's predilections. He
seemed to have forgotten everything that Schnlank had taught
him. Instead of offering his readers concise information, news
accompanied by short, sure-fire comment, he printed long series
of endless leading articles, often spilling over the front page,
which could be reprintedas they frequently werein the form
of rather big pamphlets. He treated the Arbeiterzeitung as if it
were his own publishing enterprise, serving no other purpose
than as a receptacle of his own unlimited journalistic output.
Schnlank, his erstwhile guide, was shocked by the 'anarchy'
reigning in Dresden; even Rosa Luxemburg, who otherwise held
8
Parvus, 'Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie', Die Glocke, 1915, p. 30; cf. Im Kampf um die
Wahrheit, p. 21.
34
Helphand's writing in high regard, called the Arbeiterzeitung 'the

most neglected paper'.9
However shocked the professional journalists may have been,
the working-class readers of the Arbeiterzeitung and, even more,
the young socialist intellectuals, read Helphand's articles with
enthusiasm. They were unconcerned with journalistic formulas:
they were more impressed by the spectacle of the newspaper
moving swiftly into action when a political controversy flared up;
they liked its forthright attitude to matters that were overlooked
by their comrades in Berlin, usually out of fear of government
action; they were delighted to read Marxist tracts that made
sense even to ill-educated workers. The voice of the Saxon party
organization could now be heard all over Germany; in Dresden,
'the Russian', or 6Dr. Barfuss'Parvus in Saxon dialectwas
spoken of with respect.
With the support of the local organization behind him, Parvus
was able to exercise a considerable influence on the climate of
opinion inside the German party. For two years he continued to
inundate the party executive and the congresses with suggestions,
criticism, and polemic. He was obsessed by the idea of revolution,
and he conducted, single-handed, a war on the self-satisfaction
and torpor of many members of the party. After the agrarian
controversy had died down, Helphand remorselessly continued
the argument. The question had been whether the policy of
trying to win the support of the peasants for the party be abandoned because it ran counter to Marxist dogma: Parvus was
single-minded in his defence of the purity of the Marxist laws of
development. In his view it was not the theory but political practice that needed shaking up. He intended to prove to his German
comrades that they had to revise their policy within the framework of Marxist theory, that European socialists could not afford
to wait, hands folded in their laps, for the automatic collapse of
capitalism. To stand still meant, for him, to retreat; he argued
forcefully that the German party should use its strength for the
conquest of one citadel of capitalism after the other.
He publicized his views on the tactics of the attack soon after
9
In 'Einige Briefe Rosa Luxemburgs und andere Dokumente', Bulletin of the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 1952, No. 1, p. 17.
he had taken up the job on the Arbeiterzeitung in Dresden.

Rumours were in circulation, at the time, of the possibility of a
reactionary coup
d'tat which would do away with g
frage on the federal level: this occasioned Helphand's examination, in the Neue Zeit, of the effectiveness of a political mass
strike. His series of articles entitled 'Coup d'tat and the Political
Mass Strike'10 was intended to convince the German party that,
although it could no longer fight on the barricades against a
modern army (Engels had made this point some time ago), it was
not entirely defenceless in regard to the power of the state. In the
mass strike the party possessed an up-to-date weapon. Parvus at
first regarded the strike as a means of defence, a show of power,
which had the advantage of being legal.
Again, together with Bernstein, who had first discussed the
strike in the Neue Zeit some five years before, Helphand initiated
a discussion of socialist tactics, which continued to occupy party
congresses until the outbreak of the First World War. The later
discussion, however, in which Karl Kautsky, Henrietta RolandHoist, and Rosa Luxemburg figured prominently, was of little
interest to Helphand. He had said his last word on the subject
before the beginning of the official party debate, when, in August
1904, he raised the strike from a weapon of defence to an instrument of attack. The disruption in the life of the state occasioned
by the strike, he then added, would force the party into a position
in which a 'basic decision' would have to be taken: in other
words, the party would have to engage in an open contest for
power in the state. Such a strike could no longer mean, in the
words of Jean Jaures, 'tactics of despair', but a 'method of
revolution'.11 By then Helphand did not expect the leaders of
German Social Democracy to be shifted from their position by the
force of his arguments; he was unmoved when his concept of mass
strike was described as 'general nonsense'. He was hoping that,
sooner or later, political events would make his points for him.
10
Staatsstreich und politischer Massenstreik', Neue Zeit, 1895-6, vol. 2, pp. 199-206.
261-6, 304-11, 356-64, 389-95. In 1897, the articles appeared as a pamphlet,
entitled 'Wohin fhrt die politische Massregelung der Sozialdemokratie? Kritik der
Pohtischen Reaktion in Deutschland'. The quotations given here are indicated
fording to the pagination of the pamphlet.
11
Parvus,'Der Generalstreik', in Aus der Weltpolitik, Munich, 16 August 1904.
36
His analysis of the mass strike brought Helphand's thinking

on the problem of instilling a new vigour into the socialist
struggle to another point of departure. This was the total and
tight organization of the proletariat. Socialist sympathies or even
membership of the party were not enough for him. The political
organization had to be reinforced by the trade unions, which
would represent the basic material interests of the workers. In
this respect, Helphand was again little concerned with the low
view of the value of the trade unions which the Berlin party
executive had adopted. At the Koln party congress in 1893, Bebel
had expressed the opinion that 'for natural and self-evident
reasons . . . one lifeline after another will be cut off' from the
trade unions: Helphand violently disagreed with this sentiment,
and he wrote: 'The near future belongs, in Germany, to the
trade unions.'12 Every trade union fight was a class fight, and
every class fight was a political fight: the trade unions completed
and lightened the political work of the party.
Although Helphand harped on the organizational indolence
and petty suspicion of the party executive in regard to the trade
unionsthey were not directly subordinate to the executivehe
supplemented his criticism with a number of constructive suggestions. Social Democracy, he argued again and again in a series
of articles, must learn how to use its own strength. The proletarian masses could not be contained within the movement in the
expectation of a revolution alone, a revolution that was to take
place at an unspecified time in the future. The workers were after
immediate and concrete gains. Helphand regarded the shortening
of working hours as an aim that could be successfully achieved;
the slogan concerning the eight-hour day, coined at the foundation congress of the Second International in 1889, he regarded as
a magic formula that could be used to inspire the masses to a more
intensive fight against the established order.
From Dresden he caused two resolutions to be put before the
Gotha congress in 1896, which would bind the party to take the
initiative in respect of the eight-hour day. When the speakers at
the congress said that such ideas, although 'stimulating' were
'utopian', and that 'demands that cannot be achieved [should not
12
Leipziger Volkszeitung, 20 and 22 June 1895.
The Great Fortune
37
be] put forward as resolutions', Helphand was far from discouraged. He tried again in the following year. He suggested to
the Hamburg congress in 1897 that the demand for the eight-hour
day should become the main plank in the socialist platform at the
next general election. After his suggestion had once again fallen
flat, he took it upon himself, in 1901, to surprise the party with a
ready-made draft law: all the socialist deputies had to do was to
put it before the Reichstag. Bebel, for one, was unimpressed with
Helphand's legislative abilities. He informed the Dresden congress in 1903 that he himself also wanted a law concerning the
length of working hours. But the evidence in this case was so
complex that he preferred the law to be drafted by experts, such
as the Prussian 'Privy Councillors'.13
BebePs pronouncement finally broke Helphand's patience.
So much respect for the authorities, such coyness and lack of
political initiative was beyond his power of understanding. He
furiously reminded Bebel that 'complete withdrawal from all
matters of parliamentary initiative would mean . . . only pure
opposition. An anti-government attitude would become the
lode-star of party tactics.'14
Again and again Helphand attacked the optimism that had
nourished German Social Democracy since it threw off, in 1890,
the fetters of Bismarck's anti-socialist laws. This optimism found
a classical expression in the words of August Bebel: 'The bourgeois society is working so forcefully towards its own downfall
that we only have to wait for the moment to pick up the power
that drops from its hands.'15
In an atmosphere of such tawdry illusion, Helphand's plans
for the unfolding of offensive revolutionary tactics appeared
more than ephemeral. His occasional pin-pricks did not move the
worthies on the executive in Berlin from their optimistic lethargy.
Instead, while Helphand was preaching the course of a militant
revolution from Dresden, another, equally distinctive voice was
heard. Eduard Bernstein started his funeral oration over the
grave of the revolution.
13
14
15
Protokoll Dresden, 1903, pp. 311 et seq.

Parvus, 'Nutzloser Streit', Aus der Weltpolitik, 31 August 1903.
Erfurt Protokoll, 1891, p. 172.
M.R.-D
38
In October 1897, the first of a series of articles by Bernstein

entitled 'Problems of Socialism' appeared:16 they confronted the
party with some of its unquestioned, favourite assumptions. The
capitalist system, Bernstein argued, was far from breaking down.
The economic development of the past years had proved that the
periodic crises forecast by Marx had lost their sharp edge and
were having little effect on the existing order. The socialist party,
Bernstein suggested, would do well to take note of the new facts
of capitalism, and then proceed to draw the right conclusions
from them: instead of waiting passively for a distant revolution,
the outcome of the breakdown, the party should unite in a determined effort of reform which would ameliorate the position of the
working class, as well as transform the state in a 'democratic'
sense.
Bernstein disguised his basic doubts of the validity of Marxist
dogma so carefully that the party at first failed to perceive the
importance of the issues he had raised. Both Vorwrts and the
Leipziger Volkszeitung welcomed his articles as 'stimulating observations', which could, but only in a few places, be somewhat
misunderstood. Even Karl Kautsky appeared to have been
afflicted by temporary blindness: he regarded Bernstein's essays
with 'the utmost sympathy'.
But not so Helphand in Dresden. It may have been that the
agrarian debate had first opened the gate to a revision of Marxist
dogma, and that he had expected an attack to take place soon, or
simply that he had read Bernstein's thesis more attentively than
his comrades; but be that as it may, he understood at once that
Bernstein's blow was aimed at the very roots of Marxist doctrine.
In his view, it was now the moment to show, once and for all,
whether German Social Democracy in fact stood for what it was
generally taken to stand for. He could not allow the train of
Bernstein's thought to go unchecked; he at once grasped the
communication cord. He devoted page after page in the Scksiche Arbeiterzeitung to a fierce assault on Bernstein's ideas. What
Bernstein was doing was, for Helphand, nothing less than the
'destruction of socialism'. Bernstein's doubts as to the breakdown
of the capitalist order, as to the lethal effects of economic crisis,
16
'Probleme des Sozialismus Eigenes und bersetztes', Neue Zeit, 1896-7 and 1897-8.
only proved his inability to think in a 'scientific' manner. There

was no need for the German workers, Helphand fiercely argued,
to take seriously Bernstein's prognosis that a premature revolution would end in a 'colossal defeat' of the socialist party. And
then Helphand's battle cry rose to a shrill pitch: 'Give us half a
year of violence by the government, and the capitalist society
will belong to history.'17
It shook the German socialists: one after the other, their newspapers joined the affray. Nevertheless, all the party leaders at
first restrained themselves from making public pronouncements.
They were accustomed to differences of opinion in the party, and
in particular to the disturbances caused by the editor of the
Arbeiterzeitung.
Bernstein himself believed that a chance still existed of silencing his Dresden critic. Helphand's barrage, his statistical counterblows, and his revolutionary zest were nothing but cheap
sound-effects for the ignorami. 'It is indeed ridiculous to go on
arguing, after fifty years, in the periods of the Communist Manifesto, which correspond to entirely different political and social
circumstances from those of today. . . . In the field of the
modern workers' movement it is not the sensational battles, but
the positions gained, step by step, in a continuous, tenacious
struggle, that matter.'18
The article did not achieve the intended effect: nothing could
hold Helphand back any longer. He did not stop short of attacking Bernstein personally. He had never met 'Ede', and, unlike
Kautsky, Bebel, or Liebknecht, he was unrestrained by personal
considerations or any feeling of a socialist Kameraderie. The men
on the executive were at first incredulous and then infuriated by
the spectacle of Helphand setting himself up as the Grand
Inquisitor, of Helphand prosecuting, with the most intense fury,
the much-loved pupil of the late Friedrich Engels. They watched
their friend 'Ede' being branded as an 'anti-socialist', a traitor, a
saboteur of the revolution. Every voice raised in Bernstein's
defence Helphand haughtily brushed away; he acted as the
prophet wronged.
Finally, Helphand resolved that the official condemnation
17
Schsische Arbeiterzeitung, 6 March 1898.
18
E. Bernstein, Kritisches, vol. 1, p. 750.
40
should break over the head of the erring man at the coining party
congress at Stuttgart in 1898. He caused the Dresden constituency to move a resolution which put it flatly that reform alone
could not do away with the class character of the existing state:
this was the task of the revolution.
The party executive could not put up with Helphand any
longer. Before the opening of the congress, Bebel wrote to
Kautsky, telling him frankly what he thought of Helphand: 'The
man is plagued by a devouring pride, and his resolution shows
that he has not the slightest understanding of our condition. The
last thing we need is the congress solemnly resolving that it
strives for a social revolution.'19
In the town where he had joined the party some seven years
before, Helphand suffered, at the hands of his comrades, his first
deep humiliation. The congress in Stuttgart of course rejected
Bernstein's thesis as opportunist. But the author himself was
treated kindly: he was asked to reconsider his ideas and then to
publish them in the form of a book. But no mercy was shown for
Helphand. Speaker after speaker repaid him in his own coin;
Heine, Auer, Frohme, Stadthagen, Bebel, and Liebknecht all
intended to put Helphand firmly in his place. They condemned
the tone in which he had conducted the controversy as schoolmasterish, unashamed, and unsuitable; and his criticism, though
partly justified, as out of proportion and ill-founded on facts.
Only Clara Zetkin tried to make cordial, understanding excuses
for him; she convinced no one.
Although Parvus did not carry a mandate, he was allowed to
defend himself before the congress. He did so very badly. He was
embittered and disenchanted, but by no means discouraged from
a detailed settling of accounts with Bernstein. Helphand's articles
in the Arbeiterzeitung had been merely a tentative attempt at a
reply. While the general discussion inside the party deteriorated
into a series of personal squabbles, and while many socialist
leaders made an all-out effort to minimize the incident, Parvus
settled down to dissect to the bone the body of Bernstein's
argument.
19
'Einige Briefe Rosa Luxemburgs und andere Dokumente', in the Bulletin of the
International Institute of Social History, 1952, No. 1, p. 10.
He first tackled Bernstein's doubt as to the lethal effects of the

capitalist crisis. The present economic crisis, he allowed, bore
little resemblance to the ideas of Marx. This Bernstein had perceived quite rightly. The ten-year cycles which Marx believed he
had discerned, had been discredited. The reason for this was
that capitalist development was taking place in circumstances
different from those prevailing in the middle of the nineteenth
century. Economy had broken through the frontiers of the
national states to form one single unit, the world market, which
had become the regulator of the crisis cycles. Boom and slump
came to reflect the situation in the world market: when it became
too small for the offered products a crisis resulted; when it was
extended through, say, the incorporation of Russia or America,
or the colonization of Africa or the Far East, a boom followed.
The answer to Bernstein therefore was that although the reasons
and the forms of the crises had changed, the crises themselves did
not disappear. Parvus went as far as to forecast that the crises
would be more serious for the capitalist economy than Marx
could have possibly foreseen forty years ago.
Studies concerning finance and economic crisis, land rents,
and the laws governing the world market, became Helphand's
recreation; they also confirmed his abilities as a theorist. He
advanced far beyond the ideas current at the time. It is now
accepted that economic factors had disregarded national frontiers
and that the world market was on the way to becoming a single
unit; that Europe found itself pressed hard, economically and
politically, by two new world powers, Russia and America. But
at the end of the last century, all this was a closed book to the
German socialists.
When the Reichstag came to deal with the respective merits of
free trade and protective barriers, in the great debate of 1900, the
socialist party executive described the problem as an internal
affair of the bourgeoisie, quite 'alien' to their party. The debate
went on far above the heads of the socialist parliamentarians.
Helphand's recommendations for free trade, by which the proletariat could also benefit, found no response in the party. In
1900 Helphand had anticipated a development which assumed
concrete form only half a century later:
42
Though hindered, the development of the world market has made

impressive progress. And its result at the moment is the displacement
of competition of individual industrial states by that of whole continents. In order to gain a place in this formidable race, free trade is a sine
qua non for western Europe. But insignificant as the European capital
is in relation to the working class, it is the same also in its trading
policies. It is divided, and it chases after the interests of the splintergroups and of the moment. Hence the political strife. Europe is suffering, more than ever, from small-statesmanship [Kleinstaaterei]. Although
the states have become bigger the historical yardstick has also grown,
only much more so. This is the curse of political tradition. Free trade
will do away with it, it will create great groups of nations, it will lead
to the United States of Europe. 20
Such fantasies could not be taken seriously in Germany. Helphand found more response to his suggestions on matters of tactics,
which he developed in connexion with the revisionist debate. To
the last man, every member of the party saw himself as capable of
taking part in the discussion on socialist tactics. They all wanted
a revolution, but they hoped rather than fought for it. Was the
regime not heading in the direction of its inevitable fall? To be
patient and to keep his peace ('Not to let ourselves be provoked!')
was therefore the worker's first duty. August Bebel, who, as a
speaker, exercised a hypnotic power over his public, particularly
excelled in spinning fantastic dreams about the forthcoming
crash of capitalism. This was an illusion of which Eduard David
perceptively said that its 'mother [was] the Marxist theory of crisis,
its father Engels' belief in the proximity of war'.21
Parvus of course wanted an early revolution as much as Bebel
did. But he held an entirely different view of capitalist aggressiveness and of the tasks of the powerful socialist organization. To
wait and to remain inactivein this respect he fully agreed with
Bernsteinwas a completely unsuitable tactical approach. He
was searching for a way to square the practical daily work of
the party with its ultimate aim, that of evolution with revolution.
20 Parvus, 'Die Industriezlle und der Weltmarkt', Neue Zeit, 1900-1, vol. 1, pp. 783
et seq.
21
E. David, 'Die Eroberung der politischen Macht', Sozialistische Monatshefte, Berlin,
1904, vol. 1, p. 16.
He came to realize that his ideas on the routine work of the party
did not differ much from those of Bernstein. Nevertheless, the
revolution was Helphand's main target, and here he left no room
for doubt; in his view, it was revolution alone that could do away
with the class society. When Bernstein wanted to move the party
to act in the intervening time, he could rely on Helphand's full
support. The German socialists, who were used to thinking in
either/or categories, were incredulous when, in the following
years, Bernstein and Helphand formed a tactical alliance.
In 1899, Vollmar had come to a limited agreement with the
Centre Party in Bavaria, for the purpose of the elections; he was
hopingnot in vain, as it later appearedto double the number
of socialist mandates in the Munich Diet. Rosa Luxemburg at
once gave the alarm signal in order to prevent this alliance with
the class enemy. Bernstein's followers were amazed as they
observed Helphand combat Luxemburg's views. Eleven deputies
were better than five, he argued, whatever his friend Luxemburg
might think. Only power and the possibility of exercising it
mattered.22
The first doubts arose as to whether Helphand really was the
radical Marxist he had hitherto seemed. Was not Vollmar simply
the mouth-piece of Bernstein, and the most advanced practitioner
of opportunism? Parvus disagreed: everything was permissible
that helped the party to advance. His meaning became clearer
during the discussion of the problem of the vice-presidency in 1903.
In that year, the Social Democrats became the second-strongest
party in the Reichstag, and could therefore claim the office of
Vice-President of the parliament. Bernstein at once suggested
that the socialists should accept the office. Bebel angrily dismissed the suggestion: a socialist Vice-President would have to
attend the Court, and observe its protocol. This would be unworthy of a socialist. Helphand pointed out that, although the
protocol was a bitter pill to swallow, it could be gulped down for
the sake of the position of power the party would thus achieve.
Because he wanted the party to exercise its influence through the
office, he agreed with Bernstein, 'although he is Bernstein'.23
22
23
cf. R. Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3, pp. 408 et seq., 419, and 423 et seq.
Parvus, 'Nutzloser Streit', Aus der Weltpolitik, 31 August 1903.
44
Helphand's friends and enemies could hardly believe their

eyes. They had never had an opportunity to follow a course so
zig-zag, yet founded in a logical system, in which both evolution
and revolution could be accommodated. Bebel was at the end of
his tether when he pronounced his judgement on Helphand at the
Dresden congress of 1903: 'Look at this Parvus (laughter), about
whom everybody could have sworn, only recently, that he was a
hard-bitten radical. And this proud pillar . . . is broken. . . .
Naturally as a former radical he is broken in a different way than
that in which a revisionist would break, but he is broken all the
same.'24
Parvus now grasped the fact that his tactical deliberations had
reached the point where it was difficult for him to make his views
intelligible to his comrades. Concepts of revolution or routine
daily work were too meaningless to enable him to communicate
his ideas with any precision. He began to search for an example
from the history of the working-class movement, and he found it
in Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassalle, he wrote to a friend, had rightly
recognized, already after the 1848 revolution, that the proletariat
could not stand outside the state, but could use every position it
gained inside the state for its own advancement: 'I have often
written that the proletariat, in its political struggle, should not
stand outside the general life of the state. It has to penetrate every
nook and cranny and exploit the clash of class interests; but in
practice, parliamentary opposition comes easily to resemble
bourgeois democracy.'25
Helphand also used the example of Lassalle to show how he
himself regarded the middle-class parties of oppositiona question raised by Vollmar's alliance with the Centre Party. According to Helphand, Lassalle had achieved the separation of the
workers from the middle class, and had built up their organization. Despite this, he supported the liberal and progressive
groups whenever their aims coincided with those of the proletariat: at all other times he did not hesitate to attack the bourgeoisie. Social Democracy had to behave in the same way as
24
25
Protokoll Dresden, 1903, p. 311.

Parvus to Axelrod, 18 January 1904; in Sotsial-demokraticheskoe dvizhenie v Rossii,
edited by A. N. Potresov and B. I. Nikolaevski, Moscow, 1928, p. 109.
Lassalle had done: it had to be prepared to support the Liberals,

or to conduct, when necessary, a two-front engagement against
both them and the government.
The party executive cared little or nothing for what Helphand
had to say. For his own part, he did not make it easy for his
comrades to show an interest. On the contrary, shortly before the
Lbeck congress of 1901, he decided to embark on the final and
fiercest assault on Bernstein and his followers. On this occasion
his invective was even harsher than it had been in 1898.
Without Kautsky's knowledgethe editor of Neue Zeit was
away on a summer holidayParvus published, in Kautsky's
periodical, a series of articles entitled 'Opportunism in Practice'.
Bernstein, Vollmar, and Ignaz Auer, the head of the party organization, an experienced politician and an amiable senior member of
the executive organization, were his main targets. Auer was, in
Helphand's view, the 'patron saint of opportunism' who regarded
his political actions as far above any ideological scruples. As a
'full-blooded German' he was by no means as 'overpoweringly
shrewd' as he was generally regarded to be. Bernstein's revisionism Helphand described as a hotchpotch of outworn bourgeois
ideas, which were now to become a substitute for the teaching of
Marx and Engels.
'Only a revision to the left of our party principles is now possible
. . . in the sense of the extension of political activity, . . . of
the intensification of social-revolutionary energy, . . . of a bold
endeavour and will, and not of fearful, reserved softness.'26
Bernstein was spending the accumulated revolutionary capital in
small change, while the enthusiastic agreement of the bourgeois
social reformers provided the background 'chorus for his heroic
deeds'.
Capitalism could be fought, Helphand insisted, only from the
standpoint of the social revolution. 'The proletariat can be only
the grave-digger or the subject of capitalism.'27
The motives which caused Helphand to renew his assault on
the revisionists were of a twofold nature. For personal reasons,
he regarded the time as ripe to drive his critics with 'lashes of the
26
27
Parvus, 'Der Opportunismus in der Praxis', Neue Zeit, 1900-1, vol. 2, p. 746.
ibid., p. 794.
46
whip into the frog-pond'. There were also political motives. He

thought that the revisionists' distaste for, and criticism of, the
sharpness of his tone would provide his followers with a cover for
the counter-attack. He explained this in a letter to Kautsky: 'Now
they can, by abusing my abuse, and thus retaining a certain
reserve, present our common standpoint all the more ruthlessly;
they are therefore fighting under a cover. . . . I doubt whether,
without a cover, they could fight as bravely.'28
August Bebel felt that a catastrophe was about to occur in
Lbeck. He did not regard Helphand's essays in the Neue Zeit as
some kind of provocation, but as an 'objective even though not
always correct criticism'. But he was afraid, he wrote to Kautsky,
that the 'emotion merchants' who had Parvus 'in their stomachs'
might now lose patience. 'You would not believe', he concluded
the letter, 'what animosity exists in the party against Parvus and
also Rosa [Luxemburg], and although I do not think that we
should take this prejudice into consideration, one cannot disregard it entirely.'29
The events at the Lbeck congress were even more dramatic
than Bebel had feared. Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg (who had
recently distinguished herself with a withering attack on the
French socialists) had to run the gauntlet of their critics. Bebel,
who did not want to add fuel to the fire, maintained a cautious
reserve. In his opinion, he said, it needed a 'certain amount of
tastelessness to present, so to speak, leading party comrades in
their bathing costumes'.
Nevertheless, the enemies of Helphand and Rosa Luxemburg
were in no mood for restraint. Richard Fischer made a reference
to 'literary ruffians'; Erhardt, the delegate from Ludwigshafen,
expressed his distaste for the immigrants from the east: it
appeared to him that the party life had been defiled by 'the male
and female arrivals from the east'. Wolfgang Heine, a Berlin
lawyer and one of the best-known of Bernstein's partisans,
excelled himself: antisemitism was clearly discernible behind his
attack on Helphand and Luxemburg. It made little difference that
28
29
Parvus to Kautsky, undated 1901, in 'Einige Briefe Rosa Luxemburgs und andere
Dokumente', 1952, No. 1, p. 27.
Bebel to Kautsky, 4 September 1901, in 'Einige Briefe Rosa Luxemburgs', p. 26.
the congress eventually condemned Heine's views; underneath

the surface they still could do a great deal of harm to the immigrants.
The withering attacks on him by the delegates to the Lbeck
congress made no impression on Helphand. He took nothing
back: he thought of his polemic as in no need of an apology, only
perhaps some explanation. He wrote to Kautsky after the congress : 'More than ever, the proletariat needs an open, clear, unafraid voice, which judges events as well as people with equal
sharpness. Such a voice will not be generally acceptable. It will
embitter those who think differently, it will injure the wavering,
it will anger the gentle-minded. But if it is a true voice, its future
triumphs will be the greater, the more it is at present combated
and denied.'30
In public, Helphand added: 'The revolutionary spirit speaks
in a blunt language.9 It was necessary for the young man to
employ, at this point, the words of Martin Luther: 'I know of no
other way than anger and zeal; when I want to write well, pray
well, and preach well, I must be angry.' All in all, he concluded
the discussion on what was permissible in party debate'I maintain that a hundred rudenesses are preferable to one hypocrisy.'31
When Parvus was listening to the attacks on himself at Lbeck,
he had long since lost the security the editorship of the Dresden
Arbeiterzeitung gave him. In order to present the revisionist
debate and its offshoots as one piece, we have had to anticipate
our narrative. Parvus and his friend Marchlewski had been expelled from Saxony as early as the end of 1898; the local police
could no longer tolerate their activities. At first, Parvus attempted
to exert some influence on the editorial policy of the newspaper
from Gera, the capital of the neighbouring Duchy of Reuss. In
order to make quite certain of the paper's political line, he had
Rosa Luxemburg appointed as his successor.
The arrangement held good for a short time only. A few
months later, Parvus and Marchlewski were seen out of Gera as
well; the two friends were now looking for a safer and more
permanent abode. They no longer had a large choice before
30
31
An undated letter, Kautsky-Archiv.

Parvus in Aus der Weltpolitik, 31 December 1904 and 5 January 1905.
48
them: it fell, in the end, on Bavaria, where their old opponent,

Georg von Vollmar, was kind enough to secure for them residential permission.
Helphand's departure for Munich meant that he had been
effectively removed from the centre of the party activity. But he
had not much of a position, no great influence, to lose. The
attacks on Bernstein had cost him what remained of the sympathy
of the Berlin executive; even the socialist publishers no longer
showed any interest in printing his pamphlets. After the Lbeck
congress, his erstwhile protector Kautsky started turning down
his contributions to the Neue Zeit: between 1901 and 1906, the
leading organ of the German Social Democrat party published
not a single word by Helphand.
Indeed, soon after the turn of the century it seemed as if
Helphand's career in the German party might come to a premature end. It is true that, from the point of view of the party
executive, he had been very difficult for many years. But he was
not a trouble-maker pure and simple. He had his own vision of
the German party: he thought of it as having inherited, in the
Marxist revolutionary doctrine, a great fortune, and he abhorred
the possibility of it being wasted away in the small-change of
gradual reform. He remained enough of a Russian intellectual to
be obsessed by the reality and proximity of a social revolution:
this was the centre about which all his thinking revolved.
But his disappointments in the German party were amply
compensated by the Russians. Plekhanov, as well as the younger
socialist leaders, Martov, Potresov, and Lenin, followed Helphand's attacks on Bernstein with admiration. While Bebel and
Kautsky thought themselves fortunate to have silenced the
'literary ruffians', the Russian party held Parvus in high esteem.
Plekhanov, who personally had no liking for Helphand, publicly
thanked him for his articles in the Sdchsische Arbeiterzeitung;32
Lenin wrote to his mother from Siberia, to send him copies of
Helphand's Arbeiterzeitung articles. Martov translated Helphand's series from the Neue Zeit, entitled 'Opportunism in
32
G. Plekhanov, 'Errterungen ber die Taktik. Wofr sollen wir ihm dankbar sein ?
Offener Brief an Karl Kautsky', Schsische Arbeiterzeitung supplement, published on
30 October and 2 and 3 November 1898.
Practice', into Russian, and he described it, on the occasion of

its publication in the Russian party organ, Zarya, as a 'masterly
analysis'.33
Indeed, already before the Lbeck congress, it had seemed that
Helphand might find his way back to the Russian Social Democrat party.
33 Zarya, Nos. 2-3,1901.
3
The Schwabing Headquarters
It was no accident that, at the turn of the century, Helphand began to draw closer to the Russian exiles. The nature of his
personal and political dilemma had already become apparent in
1896, soon after his first meeting with Alexander Potresov, one
of the younger of the Russian Marxists. Potresov was very
impressed by Helphand, and set out to win him over to the
Russian revolutionary movement. He suggested that Parvus
should become a member of the Russian delegation to the forthcoming congress of the Second International in London. Plekhanov, who had, a few years before, made a similar but unsuccessful
attempt, at first opposed the suggestion; he did, however, change
his mind and Helphand was invited.
At this point certain difficulties arose, and it was Helphand
himself who raised them. He was hoping for a German party
mandate as well, and he was willing to accept the Russians'
invitation on the condition that he would be allowed to do most
of the work and the voting at the congress with the Germans.
Together with his friend Rosa Luxemburg, he would almost
certainly have voted against the Russians in connexion with the
Polish question. But his reservations fell flat. He was not offered
a mandate by the German party, and he was forced to drop the
conditions. It was better to go to London as a Russian delegate
than not to go at all; and this was what, in the end, Helphand did.
Despite a somewhat irritating quality in his behaviour towards
the Russians, they continued to treat him with consideration,
even with respect. In London, although he was unable to speak
to the plenary sessions of the congress, he took the chair at the
separate meetings of the Russian delegation: a magnanimous
gesture on the part of such luminaries of the movement as Plekhanov and Vera Zasulich.
51
For the time being, the advances by the Russian exiles proved
futile. When he returned to Germany from London, Helphand's
job as editor of the Dresden Arbeiterzeitung proved too absorbing
to allow him to take part in the Russian revolutionary movement.
The controversy with Bernstein kept him busy until the summer
of 1898; then the expulsion from Saxony and his move to Munich
revived his interest in Russia, and subsequently brought him
nearer to his Russian comrades.
The events in the country of his birth also attracted Helphand's attention. The century ended on a harsh, disturbed note
in Russia. In the early months of 1899, a series of strikes disrupted
the young industries of the Empire. Had they known of the
report by the Chief of Police at Moscow, the Russian socialists
may well have been encouraged: he thought their success had an
extremely dangerous and prejudicial effect upon the State, inasmuch as
they [the strikes] constitute an elementary school for the political
education of the working class. They confirm the confidence of the
masses in their own power, teach them more practical methods of combat, and train and give prominence to specially gifted individuals of
greater initiative. They further convince the labourer of the possibility
and advantage of combination, and of collective action in general. At
the same time, they render him more accessible to Socialist ideas which
he had previously regarded as idle dreams. The consciousness of a
solidarity of interests with the labouring classes throughout the world
is developed in these local struggles. This involves a recognition that
political agitation in the social democratic sense is indispensable to
victory. The present situation is so disquieting and the activity of the
revolutionary agitators so intense, that a combined action of all authorities affected will be necessary to combat it.1
Apart from unrest among the workers, disturbances also

occurred at the universities. In February, students at St. Petersburg clashed with the police; violent protest meetings against the
official measures were organized at universities throughout the
country. Then the institutions of higher learning were closed
down, and an Imperial commission was appointed. In March,
while its members were considering university reforms, all
1
Annual Register, 1899, p. 301.
52
students were expelled. If they wished to re-enter they had to

sign individual petitions, binding themselves to submit unconditionally to university regulations. The famine, more serious than
the one in 1892, on which Helphand had reported in the Berlin
newspaper, Vorwrts, formed the general background to the
disturbances among the workers and the students. The Tsarist
Government was aware of the gravity of the situation in the
countryside: in the budget published at the beginning of the
year (calendar and financial years were concurrent in Russia), 35
million roubles were set aside for famine relief. But neither the
help of the government, nor the work done by the Red Cross in
the most severely afflicted areas, provided enough relief for the
starving population of rural Russia. The disturbances of 1899
tempted some of the revolutionaries to return to their country
from exile. Vera Zasulich crossed the frontier illegally, shortly
before Helphand.
Early in May 1899 Helphand left Munich for Russia, carrying
an Austro-Hungarian passport under the improbable name of a
Czech called August Pen; he was accompanied by a friend of his,
Lehmann, a socialist doctor of medicine. Lehmann was older than
Helphand, and it was he who paid most of the expenses of the
trip. He was an idealist who started to study medicine at an
advanced age; a son of a well-to-do family, he joined the still
illegal socialist party in the early eighteen-eighties.
The journey was not, at any rate for Parvus, without excitement. As the train approached the Russian frontier he was filled
with a feeling of 'uncertainty and curiosity' ;2 he was musing on
his chances of ending the journey in Siberia. 'The train stops.
We are at the door of the carriageand as if rooted to the earth,
there stood before us a completely still, hard and bony figure in a
grey military coat, the first Russian gendarme, and also the very
first thing we saw in Russia. Without a change in his expression,
he extended his arm and said just one word: "Passport".'3 After
they had handed over their passports, Parvus and Lehmann left
the train and followed the general stream of people which was
filling up a large, ill-lit hall. In the huge customs shed there was a
long, crescent-shaped counter; the officials stood on the inside
2
C. Lehmann and Parvus, Das hungernde Russland, p. 6.
ibid., p. 11.
53
and the travellers on the outside; at its focal point, behind the
officials, there was the commander's table, and on it, a bright
lamp, the only one in the room. The officials were only concerned with the authenticity of the passports and with the literature the travellers were carrying; they checked some of the travel
documents against the 'black book', a list of people the Russian
authorities regarded as undesirable. Helphand had good reason
to be nervous. He was travelling on a forged Austro-Hungarian
passport, and he had a police record in Russia. Nevertheless,
nothing unpleasant happened to him, and he was allowed to enter
the country of his birth after a twelve-year absence.
A few hours later the train went on to St. Petersburg, via
Kovno and Pskov. When the travellers woke up the following
morning, they had passed the half-way mark of their journey to
the capital; during the night, layers of fine dust had covered all
their personal belongings. Having dusted themselves, the two
socialist friends watched the countrysidenot that there was
very much to look at for the landscape before them was bleak and
desolate. Dust seemed to have taken the place of people; in
comparison, the sandy plains of eastern Prussia appeared a land
of plenty to the two travellers. They amused themselves, for a
while, by timing the incidence of the human element against the
desolate background. Only one object of interest relieved the
tedium of the journey: about two o'clock in the afternoonan
hour before they reached St. Petersburgthe travellers caught a
glimpse of the gloomy castle of Gatchina where the Tsar,
Alexander III, spent a large part of his reign. He was lonely there,
but safe from the attacks of the terrorists.
The two friends spent a few days in St. Petersburg. Neither of
them had ever visited the capital before, and they indulged in
traditional tourist pastimes. They admired the magnificent
architecture of the city, and were amazed at the way in which its
white nights affected the lives of the inhabitants. There seemed
to be for them little difference between night and day; after midnight, the streets were as busy as at noon. They also visited the
Saints Peter and Paul Fortress with its prison, one of the toughest
in Russia: a few years later, Helphand was to get to know it much
more intimately. From St. Petersburg they travelled to Moscow,
M.R.-E
54
the more 'Russian' (to Helphand this meant the more 'Asiatic') of
the two towns. They were amazed at the number of pictorial
symbols that served as shop signsan aid for the many illiterates.
Lehmann had brought with him a camera, the latest model from
the Zeiss works; something quite simple went wrong with the
instrument, and the doctor had to spend most of his time in
Moscow looking for someone capable of putting it right.
From Moscow the two travellers set out on an arduous journey
which took them to Nizhni Novgorod, then down the Volga to
Kazan, from there to the River Kama, and then up the river to a
small landing stage called Mursikha, the easternmost point of
their journey. After a brief stay there, they turned south to the
province of Samara. They went from Orenburg to the town of
Samara on the Trans-Siberian Railway; from there once more up
the Volga to Simbirsk and then back to Moscow, Warsaw, and
Germany. The whole trip took them several months and they
covered some 5,000 miles. Their main purpose was a detailed
investigation of the famine areas.
Back in Munich, Helphand and Lehmann spent the remaining
months of 1899 writing their joint book. Lehmann had kept a
diary of the journey, and he wrote the medical parts as well as
the accounts of their visit to St. Petersburg and to Moscow. Helphand wrote most of the book, and did also all the editing: the
political slant is recognizably his. They sent the finished manuscript, together with a large number of photographs taken by
Lehmann, to their publisher, Dietz of Stuttgart, early in the
following year.
Although the book still remains a valuable historical source, it
completely lacks human sympathy and its intention is all too
clearly propagandist. Indeed, excerpts from it were later used in
France, during the socialists' drive against the subscription of
French loans to the Tsarist Government. The authors summed
up the purpose of their book in the following manner:
The world exhibition in Paris and, before, in Chicago, gave the Russian
government a magnificent opportunity for self-advertisement. By skilful
arrangement, it conjured up before the visitors a picture of riches and
plenty. Is that not the old art of Potemkin villages? We have known, for
55
a long time, that Russia is a land rich in natural resources. But what has
always surprised us about her is how little she has exploited these
resources, how poor she is among all her riches. Has there been a change
already? This book shows the reverse side of the coin: the official
Tsarist Russia presents herself as a Russia of affluenceour book
describes the starving Russia.4
There are also some interesting and obvious omissions in the

book. Apart from two autobiographical referencesone concerning the Berezino fire, a memory from Helphand's childhood,
and the other relating to his brush with the customs officials after
his first visit to Switzerland in 1886the book tells us nothing
more about Helphand personally. He did not even mention the
fact that he was travelling on a forged passport, which would
have explained his nervousnesswhich he did describeat the
frontier post. He made no reference to the fact that at least one of
his parents was still alive in Russia, and he is very unlikely to
have made a detour to visit them. Nor is there any mention in the
book that Helphand tried to contact the leaders of the socialist
movement in Russia. There is only a reticent reference to a visit
of 'acquaintances' in the suburbs of Moscow:5 in fact, Helphand
and Lehmann did meet Potresov, with whom they discussed
plans for the publication of a Russian socialist newspaper abroad.
After his return to Munich, Helphand's relations with the
Russian exiles became more intimate. The Bavarian capital was
at the time attracting the Russians, students and political exiles
alike, in large numbers. Late in the summer of 1900, Lenin and
PotresovMartov joined them laterarrived there as well. The
three revolutionaries had met in Russia in May, and they decided
to start publishing a newspaper abroad; they were influenced by
Helphand in their choice of residence. From Germany, Lenin and
Potresov made a short visit to Geneva, where they met Plekhanov
and Axelrod. Lenin and his friend put their plans before the
older men, who were opposed to the suggestion that the paper
should be published in Germany. Plekhanov wanted it to appear,
under his editorship, in Geneva; he was clearly unwilling to
exchange his pleasant legal refuge for the hazards of illegal
4
Preface to Das hungernde Russland.
ibid., p. 32.
56
existence in Bavaria. In the end, the two young revolutionaries

returned to Germany with Plekhanov's reluctant blessing.
They wasted no time. Early in November Lenin wrote a leading
article on party press and organization, which was published in
one of the first numbers of Iskra. The newspaper was turned out
by a German Social Democrat printing-press in Leipzig, on
specially thin paper, in closely packed, neat type. Its every
feature bore witness to the preoccupations of the younger
generation of the Russian revolutionaries.
Whereas Plekhanov and Axelrod had organized their group
of Marxists in exile and in isolation from their home country,
Lenin and his friends had undergone a different kind of development. They had embarked on their revolutionary careers in
Russia; they had lived through imprisonment and banishment to
Siberia; they arrived in exile as hardened conspirators, with an
intimate knowledge of the difficulties involved in the organization
of a socialist mass movement in Russian conditions. They were
more practical, tougher, and more ruthless than the older exiles
of the Plekhanov vintage. They knew the value of maintaining
close connexions with their home country; they had built up an
underground network in Russia, and they intended to run it. This
meant that they had to keep their comrades at home supplied with
political directives and with material for the use of the agitators.
They decided to produce their paper in Germany because this
would facilitate its dispatch to Russia; its size and weight were
designed for easy smuggling. In the first issue, Lenin's concern
with a strong, efficient party became apparent. It foreshadowed the
formation, two years later, of a party of professional revolutionaries under his leadership.
The qualities of the younger generation of the Russians appealed to Helphand; he himself had been critical of Plekhanov
and his friends when he had made their acquaintance.
Lenin met Helphand for the first time in Munich. He was three
years younger, and he was quite familiar with the name of Parvus.
In March 1899 he had reviewed a collection of essays translated
into Russian, on the crisis in agriculture, by Parvus; he described
the author as a 'talented German publicist'.6 A few months later
6
Collected Works, vol. 4, pp. 51 et seq.
57
Lenin asked his mother to forward to him, in Siberia, Helphand's

anti-revisionist articles.7
Helphand did not boast when he later wrote that he had persuaded the editors of Iskra to live in Munich.8 The town offered
many advantages for the Russian revolutionaries, and Helphand
was able to render them a variety of good services. Lenin lived in
Munich illegally, using a Bulgarian passport provided for him by
Christo Rakovsky, the wealthy young socialist from Dobrudja.
Lenin did not like having too many contacts with the German
socialists himself: Helphand was the only 'German comrade'
whom Lenin and his wife saw frequentlyespecially after they
moved nearer to him, into the Munich artists' suburb of Schwabing.9
Indeed, in the first five years of the century, Helphand's flat in
Schwabing was a focal point for the Russian exiles. Rosa Luxemburg met Lenin there for the first time; Lev Trotsky stayed there
with his wife. Lenin's correspondence from Russia was sent to the
addresses of German socialists, which had been supplied by
Helphand; they were then forwarded to Munich to one 'Dr.
Leman'10 who was no other than Dr. Lehmann, Helphand's
friend and companion on his trip to Russia. According to Martov,11 the two most active supporters of the Iskra group among the
Germans were Lehmann and Dietz, the Stuttgart publisher of
Das hungernde Russland. At his Schwabing flat, Helphand ran an
illegal printing-press, a highly efficient machine which incorporated a device designed to destroy the printing frame instantly;
a precaution against the possibility of a police raid. On this
machine, eight numbers of Iskra were printed.12
The editorial board of Iskra stayed in Munich until the beginning of the year 1902. Helphand was then in a position much to
his own liking. He was the host, the man-in-between, an intermediary between two worlds. He drew his strength precisely
from this situation. There were as yet no differences between him
7
The Letters of Lenin, edited by E. Hill and D. Mudie, London, 1936, p. 96.
9
N. K. Krupskaya, Lenin, Moscow, 1959, p. 68.
10
ibid., p. 60.
11
J. Martov, Geschichte der russischen Sozialdemokratie, Berlin, 1926, p. 59.
12
L. Stern (ed.), Die Auswirkungen der ersten russischen Revolution auf Deutschland von
1905-!907, Berlin, 1956, p. 40.
8
58
and Lenin; he consented to write for the Russian press on the

German socialist movement and took pleasure in introducing the
young generation of the Russian socialists to his German comrades. In Helphand's own words, he 'wanted to bring the
intellectuals on the editorial board of Iskra closer to the mass
movement of German Social Democracy'.13 The Russians had
retained their revolutionary fervour; the Germans had built up a
mass organization; and Helphand believed they had a lot to learn
from each other.
At the same time, Helphand set to work among the Russian
and Polish students at Munich University and the technical
school. Together with his friend Julian Marchlewski, he became a
well-known and highly esteemed figure among them. He wrote
and printed propaganda pamphlets for the students' societies; he
took a prominent part in their social functions; and he organized
demonstrations of sympathy with the Russian revolutionary
movement. When he could no longer resist the attractions of the
revolution in Russia in October 1905, he left Munich just in time.
The Munich police had prepared, two months before, a highly
incriminating document on the subject of Alexander Helphand.
Had he stayed in Munich, the loss of Bavarian residential rights
would have been the lightest penalty.
Helphand's endeavours to bring the Germans and the Russians
together were so intense that even the Munich police could not
help noticing them. On 30 August 1905, the Chief of Police
reported:
Helphand wilfully uses his relations with the Russian students on the
one hand, and, on the other, with the local Social Democrats in order to
gain sympathy for the Russian revolutionary movement, as well as for a
systematic linking together of our own trade union and socialist cause
with the revolutionary tendencies abroad, a connexion whichbecause
of the persistence with which it has been pushed into the foreground on
various occasions since the beginning of the yearhas become troublesome to the public; it seems to be, at least, not commendable for the
public good. In this respect we should remember the regrettable coincidence of the great demonstrations of sympathy for the Russian
13
Im Kampf um die Wahrheity p. 9.
59
revolutionaries with the obstinate demonstrations of the unemployed,

the manner in which questions of Bavarian internal and foreign policy
were dragged in, the unauthorized collections for those killed during the
events in St. Petersburg, at a time when aid for the unemployed was
introduced at the cost of financial sacrifice, the Russian students' dance,
too obviously following the murder of Grand Duke Sergei, in order to
prove that these developments, as they occur under the visible influence
of agitators like Helphand, are certain to lack in consideration for the
public welfare of the country and the town.14
The Chief of Police in Munich expressed, at the end of the

report, the fear that as a result of Helphand's activities the
workers' meetings in Munich would lose their hitherto peaceful
character. Indeed, in the years Helphand spent in the Bavarian
capital, he exerted himself to quicken the leisurely pace of the
local socialist movement. The peaceful character of the workers'
meetings was exactly what Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, disliked
when she witnessed, in 1901, a May Day parade in Munich.15
The sight of the German Social Democrats, with their wives and
children, their pockets stuffed with horse-radishes, swiftly and
silently marching through Munich in order to get to the beer
gardens in the suburbs as quickly as possible, all this made
Krupskaya profoundly sad. She wanted to take part in 6real militant demonstrations, and not a procession organized by the
police'. She did not stay in Munich long enough to see her heart's
desire fulfilled.
Soon after the departure of the editorial board of Iskra from
Munich, Lenin made the opening moves in his campaign to capture the control of the Russian Social Democracy. At the second
party congress in the summer of 1903, the split took place between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Conflicting views of
the party organization emerged: Lenin defended the need for a
highly centralized society of professional revolutionaries, the
kind of organization he had outlined in the first issue of Iskra.
In the meantime, however, the frontier guards and the Tsarist
police started to inflict severe punishment on the underground
traffic between the socialists abroad and at home. The split
14
L. Stern, op. cit., pp. 41 and 42.
15
N. K. Krupskaya, Lenin, p. 68.
60
between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks was only faintly

reflected, at first, in the party organization in Russia. Although
Lenin was convinced that only his kind of party was capable of
leading the Russian working-class movement, its direction in fact
began to elude the grasp of the party. In the early years of the
century, the growing revolutionary unrest among the workers in
Russia's industrial centres was, on the whole, taking place independently of the Social Democrat organization.16 At the same
time, competitors for the favours of the Russian public were
appearing on the scene. In 1901, an illegal group of Social
Revolutionariesdirect descendants of the populists, with their
predilection for terrorist activitywas set up; soon afterwards,
the liberals began to seek agreement on a political programme
among like-minded men, and to organize their ranks.
Indeed, at the time of the controversy on party organization, it
seemed possible that Lenin might get too involved in migr
politics, and that, like so many revolutionaries before him, he
would disappear into the futility and oblivion of exile. Mainly
through Potresov's good services, Helphand was well informed
about the differences among the exiles, and he soon noted their
growing alienation from their home country. By the summer of
1904, he was aware of the fact that the Russian party had lost
contact with the masses, and that it was working as a 6motor
without a fly-wheel'.17
For some time after the conclusion of the second party congress in the summer of 1903, European socialists remained unaware of the momentous events that led to the split of the Russian
Social Democrat party. Helphand was the first to break the
silence after the storm. He reported on the split in his agency
news-sheet at the end of November 1903.18 He was clearly unwilling to take sides; Lenin appreciated Helphand's non-partisan
tone, and he suggested to him to wait for the publication of the
protocol of the congress, and not to take 'party gossip for hard
currency'.19 Helphand regarded the restoration of unity among
16
17
cf. Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, London, 1960, p. 41.
A. N. Potresov and B. I. Nikolaevski (editors), Sotsial-demokraticheskoe dvizhenie v
Rossii, vol. 1, Moscow, 1928, p. 137.

18
19
Aus der Weltpolitik, in an article entitled 'Der Anfang vom Ende ?' 30 November 1903.
Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 105.
61
the Russian socialists as imperative; he thought the authority of

the German party might help to heal the breach. For over a year
he wrote a large number of letters to Potresov, Axelrod, and
Martov, who were now Lenin's adversaries and, since his resignation, in control of Iskra: Parvus implored them, exhorted them,
and, most frequently, sermonized them.20
In a letter to Axelrod at the beginning of January 1904, Helphand made the first move in the campaign aimed at bringing the
Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks together. After reading an article
by Axelrod in Iskra which dealt with the problem of the unity
of Russian socialism, Parvus wrote to the author: 'You have
touched upon a sore spot in the policy of the Russian Social
Democrat party. The fight against autocracy demands the unity
of all the elements of opposition and the concentration of forces
for an immediate political effect.' Nevertheless, Helphand did not
want to give Axelrod and his friends the impression that he was,
without reservations, on their side. He told Potresov that he intended to remain in touch with Lenin; in February, he urged the
Mensheviks to co-opt Lenin, without making any fuss, on to the
editorial board of Iskra, and to do so even if Lenin refused to
admit, by way of compensation, a Menshevik to the central committee of the Bolshevik faction.21 When Potresov complained that
Lenin was a man with whom it was impossible to co-operate,
Helphand replied that the unity of the party was more important
than personal animosities. A few months later, Karl Kautsky
gave the Mensheviks exactly the same advice.
In his zeal to mediate between the two factions of the Russian
party, Parvus made a bad blunder. He expressed the opinion that
the whole leadership of the party was suffering from the same
disease as Lenin, in overestimating their importance in regard to
the working masses. He lumped the leader of the Bolsheviks
together with his adversaries, and reprimanded them as a lot of
self-important adolescents. It pleased no one. Lenin was in no
mood to take advice or criticism, and he firmly declined the offer
to rejoin the editorial board of Iskra.
20
21
A large part of this correspondence was printed in Potresov and Nikolaevski, op. cit.,
pp. 108-20, 136-44, 152-7.
ibid., p. 112.
62
A few weeks later, a thoughtful Potresov wrote to his friend

Axelrod: 'How Lenin is to be beaten, that is the question. I think
that one should, first of all, let loose on him authorities like
Kautsky (we have him already), Rosa Luxemburg, and Parvus.'22
By this time, Helphand's sympathies, as well as most of his contacts, were with the Mensheviks. He came to regard Lenin's
struggle for power in the party with an almost physical aversion.
Kautsky also came down, in the end, on the side of Lenin's
critics; Rosa Luxemburg wrote with distaste of the 'night-watchman spirit of ultra-centralism recommended by Lenin and his
friends'.23
It was natural that Helphand and Luxemburg, who had
received a large part of their training as socialists in Germany,
should have viewed Lenin's activities with suspicion and contempt. They regarded mass organizationlike the organization
they knew in Germanyas essential for the advance of socialism;
they thought the employment of absolutist methods unnecessary
in the struggle against an absolutist regime. The attitudes of the
Mensheviks had certain affinities with those of Helphand: they
were keen to learn from their German comrades, and were even
prepared to overlook a certain amount of patronizing. Lenin, on
the other hand, went his own way. He was ruthless, willing to pay
a high price for a clear-cut victory, hovering, at the time, on the
verge of a nervous breakdown.
While the Russian exiles quarrelled and intrigued, and Helphand tried, in vain, to mediate between them, the Tsarist
Government blundered into a war with Japan. Helphand was
convinced that the war provided the weightiest argument for the
unity of the Russian Social Democrat party. In the issue of Iskra
that appeared soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Helphand
started a series of articles under a significant title'War and
Revolution'.24 It opened with a prophetic sentence: 'The RussoJapanese war is the blood-red dawn of coining great events.'
Parvus then proceeded to develop the thesis that the period of
European stability that had begun in 1871, after the last of the
22
24
23
ibid., p. 125.
Neue Zeit, 1903-4, vol. 2, pp. 484-92 and 529-39.
They were reprinted in Parvus's book Rossiya i revolyutsiya, St. Petersburg, 1906, pp. 83
et seq.
63
wars for national unification, was brought to an end by the outbreak of the war between Russia and Japan. It opened a new
cycle of crisis. Parallel to his theory of economic crisis,25 he argued
that the national state had played out its role. Future historical
development would not be shaped by national hostilities, but by
the economic interests of the modern industrial states, which had
already embarked on a ruthless struggle for domination of the
world market. Competition for the still unexploited sources of
raw materials and for overseas markets would involve the European Great Powers in a conflict which would 'inevitably lead to
a world war'.
Parvus then stressed the special position of Russia in this
development: unlike Japan, England, or Germany, she was not
compelled to conduct wars for capitalist reasons. The Tsarist
regime needed the war with Japan to relieve internal pressures by
military victories abroad, and to restore, through victory, its
credit on the European stock exchanges. Nevertheless, Parvus
was convinced that the war would act as a ventilator for the pentup frictions and energies inside Russia. He argued that no radical
overhaul of Russia's political system could be expected from the
Tsarist Government, and that the hopes of the liberals for a
constitution were unfounded. The Russo-Japanese war would,
according to Helphand, further disturb the precarious internal
balance in Russia. He warned his Russian comrades before taking
a purely determinist view of these developments. He thought it
possible that the 'continuation of the capitalist order will be due
to the policies of the Social Democrat party. It is impossible to
make events. But it is possible to delay them. The idea of revolution fights against this. It fights against reaction, against political
stupidity, against all vagueness, cowardice, and indecisiveness
that slow down political development. It is not an independent
political factor, but it makes the way for history clear.'26
Helphand advocated a united front of all the opposition
elements in the struggle against Tsarism; he did, however, fear
that the contribution of the working class to the struggle might
lose its identity: he insisted that the proletariat must exploit class
antagonism for its own political ends. He was convinced that the
25
See above, p. 41.
26
ibid., p. 132.
64
international development of capitalism would lead to a revolution in Russia and that this revolution, in turn, would influence
the internal situation of other countries. 'The Russian revolution
will shake the political foundations of the capitalist world, and
the Russian proletariat will take over the role of the avant-garde
of the social revolution.'27
In the articles "War and Revolution', Helphand emerged as a
theorist of great originality and power, capable of writing in a
more distinguished manner than anyone else in the movement.
He rose above the main preoccupationswhether with reform
work or with the shape of the partythat exercised the minds of
the German and Russian socialists, and he took a broad view of
his main concernrevolution. The ideas Helphand expressed in
Iskra were far-sighted and lucid. He rightly insisted on the
importance of interaction between the domestic and the international situation; he pointed out the connexions between war
and revolution. He grasped the fact that war, just as much as the
inexorable economic forces of classical Marxist theory, would
open the door of revolution. He understood the manner in which
war could act as a powerful solvent on the fabric of the state. But,
most important of all, he substituted the Russian for the German
proletariat as the avant-garde of the revolutionary movement. It
was a rationalization of his disappointing experiences with the
German party.
It was at the height of this impressive intellectual activity that
Helphand met Trotsky for the first time. Trotsky was not the
only Russian revolutionary, as the Munich police so carefully
recorded, who found a refuge in Helphand's flat. Lev Davidovich
BronsteinTrotskyreceived much more than hospitality from
his host. His brief but intense friendship with Parvus was one of
the most important events in Trotsky's stormy life.28 It was, of
course, a friendship between two revolutionaries in which the
political element overshadowed every other; nevertheless, much
later, after years of concentrated slander against Helphand from
diverse quarters, Trotsky was able to find words of the highest
27
28
ibid., p. 133.
In the first volume of Trotsky's biography, The Prophet Armed, London, 1954, Mr.
Deutscher devoted a chapter entitled 'An Intellectual Partnership' to the relations
between the two men.
65
praise for his former friend. A bond of sympathy, even of loyalty,

remained between them although their ways had parted.
They met for the first time in the spring of 1904. Trotsky was
some twelve years younger than Helphand but their backgrounds
were similar. He was born into a lower middle-class Jewish family
in South Russia and went to school in Odessa; revolution claimed
him before he began his university career. By the time Trotsky
came into exile in western Europe in the autumn of 1902, he
commanded a good inside knowledge of the Russian movement, and an intimate experience of its hazards. Like Helphand,
Trotsky knew the view from the Odessa harbour; but the
younger man had also seen the inside of the local prison.
After he fled from Siberia in October 1902, Trotsky spent the
first months in exile under Lenin's wing, who thought very highly
of him. He had Trotsky co-opted to the editorial board of Iskra
and used him, like all new arrivals, as a source of information on
the situation in Russia. But there existed sharp differences
between the two men's characters; Lenin had none of the warmth
of Trotsky's nature: it was inevitable that the passionate demagogue and the calculating strategist would, sooner or later,
come into collision. They did, on many occasions. At the London
congress in 1903, Trotsky was one of Lenin's sharpest critics.
He remained on the editorial board of the party newspaper even
after it had passed into the control of Lenin's adversaries; after
some personal differences with Plekhanov, Trotsky then parted
company with the Mensheviks as well, in April 1904. At the time
of their first meeting, Trotsky, like Helphand, stood outside
either of the two factions of the Russian party, and shared Helphand's concern with the schism.
Trotsky came to Helphand with an open mind. Although Marx
was his spiritual mentor whose theories guaranteed the advent of
the revolution, Marxism was not, on the whole, an informative
guide to political action. In this respect, Parvus was more helpful;
in Trotsky's own words, 'his early studies brought me closer to
the problem of Social Revolution, and, for me, definitely transformed the conquest of power by the proletariat from an astronomic "final" goal to a practical task of our own day'.29 Indeed, in
29
My Life, New York, 1930, p. 167.
66
regard to revolutionary action, Helphand's thinking was freer

of the dead weight of determinism than that of his contemporaries; he had definite views on the manner in which the revolution would occur, and how it could be delayed or expedited.
The corner-stones of the later 'Trotskyism' were laid down in
Munich. Helphand's thesis on the development of capitalism into
a universal system, on the decline of the importance of national
states, and on the parallel extension of both the bourgeois and the
proletarian interests outside the framework of these states, all this
Trotsky took over in toto. But he was most strongly influenced by
his friend's conception of the mass strike, the starting-point of
the coming revolution. Trotsky's imagination was fired by Helphand's abstract idea of the strike, and he gave it concrete form
in a pamphlet30 he wrote in the autumn of 1904. The event took
place in Russia a year later.
Nevertheless, Trotsky's time in Munich was not all taken up in
spinning political theory. Trotsky was happy at Helphand's
flat in Schwabing and he asked his wife, Natalia Sedovashe
was in Switzerlandto come and join him. Helphand was a
considerate and entertaining host, and Schwabing was the ideal
starting-point for an exploration of the artistic and bohemian life
of Munich. Its small cafs and bars were well-suited for passing
the time convivially, and, in this respect as well, Helphand proved
a useful guide; the two friends became well known among the
cartoonists and writers around the Simplicissimus. Much later in
his life Trotsky was describednot entirely without justification
as a cosmopolitan who felt at home everywhere in the world, a
revolutionary with artistic ambitions, an internationalist by conviction, who knew his way around the coffee-houses of Vienna as
well as around the Red Army trenches. For this kind of life, the
young man could not have chosen a better tutor than Helphand.
In this relationship, Trotsky did not remain a pupil and junior
partner. Although he greatly admired his host, he did not overlook a certain characteristic instability in Helphand. He distrusted the marked ambiguity in the older man in whose, as
Trotsky put it, 'head of a bulldog', desire for riches was inextricably mixed with the quest for a social revolution. Trotsky dis30
Do devyatovo Yanvarya, Geneva, 1905.
67
approved of his friend's uncontrolled eagerness to live his life to

the full, of his frivolity and spiritual instability, of the laziness
that prevented him from developing his talent. The young man's
reservations made it possible for him to free himself from
Helphand's tutelage. He had, without doubt, assimilated his
older friend's most important ideas, but he was independent
enough to use them for the construction of his own system, to
develop them further. He went too far for Helphand: we shall
have occasion, in the following chapter, to trace the collapse of
their intellectual partnership.
In the meantime, in Munich, consideration of the fastapproaching revolution was the focal point of their interest.
What tactics should the party employ, and what class aims should
it pursue? And thenwas the revolution in Russia a middle-class
affair, like the European revolutions in 1848, or would it open
the door to socialism?
The results of these deliberations indicate that Helphand was
mainly concerned with the political and tactical aspects of the
problems, whereas Trotsky concentrated on the actual revolutionary developments. Helphand's tactical suggestions were
directed against the middle class: the proletariat had to be careful,
Helphand explained in an open letter to Lenin,31 not to become
an auxiliary unit under liberal command. It should, as Lassalle
had shown, remain an independent fighting force, which, in case
of possible treason to the revolution by the middle class, could at
once disengage itself from the united front against the Tsarist
regime, in order to carry on, alone, a two-front war against the
Government and the liberals. Helphand aimed not only at a
victory for constitutional democracy, but also at the extension of
the class struggle; not only at the reorganization of the existing
order, but above all at the political advance of the socialist
organizations.
Trotsky, on the other hand, recorded his views in a manuscript which he finished shortly before his departure from
Munich. He offered it to the Mensheviks in Geneva for publication: they were, however, somewhat taken aback by Trotsky's
arguments, and the appearance of the pamphlet was delayed.
31
Reprinted in Rossiya i revolyutsiya.
68
The Mensheviks disapproved of Trotsky's attacks on the Russian

bourgeoisie. Trotsky judged its revolutionary potential by the
standards of the socialist underground work, and his estimate of
the degree to which the middle class was unfitted to take part in
the revolution far exceeded that of Helphand. For Trotsky, the
middle class was a negligible political factor that could be entire
discounted in the plotting of the course of the revolution. The
proletariat would have to carry the main burden of the struggle:
the political mass strike would give the main impetus to the
unfolding of the strength of the working class. A few weeks later
Trotsky was proved right.
Nevertheless, friendships with the Russian exiles, and their
politics, however absorbing, could not occupy Helphand fully
during his stay in Munich. His business transactions, and his
unsettled family life also made heavy demands on his time. After
the German party had put him into cold storage, his desire to be
rich, and to be able to live independently both of the meagre
journalist's fees and of the socialist publishers, became so intense
and obvious that it was noticed by his friends. In this regard as
well, he thought in large dimensions. Since, after the Lbeck
congress, much of the German party press was inaccessible to
him, he wanted to found his own newspaper; a radical daily, he
confided to Trotsky, which should appear simultaneously in
four European languages. He was able to fulfil his wish some
twenty years later; but then it was no longer a revolutionary
organ but a solid, constructive magazine, more liberal than
socialist.
What he in fact accomplished at the timehe was never short
of magnificent ideaswas more modest. After his expulsion from
Dresden, he had founded, together with his friend Marchlewski,
a small feature-agency. It offered the provincial socialist press
weekly supplies of leading articles written by Helphand, and
published under the title Aus der Weltpolitik. It was a difficult
enterprise to run. The provincial press might well have benefited
by accepting, more readily than it did, Helphand's services: he
offered them a good coverage of the main foreign events. But the
party was still occupied almost exclusively with internal
problems, and only a few newspapers made use of the agency.
sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
I. Karl Kautsky, 1905
British Museum
II. Helphand, Trotsky, and Lev Deutsch in the Saints Peter

and Paul Fortress, 1906
69
Although it made it possible for Helphand to publicize his views,

its political influence was negligible; it did, however, provide
him with a small income, which helped to bridge the first difficult
months in Munich.
In order to acquire a bigger capital, Helphand embarked on
another project. In the summer of 1902 he founded a publishing
house, the Verlag slawischer und nordischer Literatur. It was
based on an original idea; since Russia was not one of the signatories of the Berne copyright convention of 1886, Russian
authors were not protected by its provisions, and their work
could be pirated abroad. (This is still the case nowadays. The
lack of a formal agreement of course works also in the other direction, to the disadvantage of foreign authors translated into
Russian.) Helphand realized that he would establish the Russian
authors' claim to legal protection by publishing small editions,
say 100 copies, in Germany. He himself remained in the background: Marchlewski became the titular head of the new publishing house.
An old friend of Helphand's since their student years in
Switzerland, Marchlewski had worked with him since 1896. Born
in Poland in the same year as Helphand1867Marchlewski
ideally complemented his friend. He was a natural diplomat, who
later became the successful arbiter of innumerable disputes inside
the Polish party. While Helphand generated ideas and plans at a
high rate, Marchlewski's strength lay in quiet, precise, and
persevering work. He was able to bring Helphand down to earth
from his flights of fancy; he was concerned that the publishing
venture should not only be started, but that it should also be
efficiently carried on. He was, for Helphand, friend, partner, and
managing director in one person.
The enterprise made an astonishingly good start. Its first
venture was a sensational success: the discovery of Maxim Gorki
Russia's first genuine proletarian writerfor the western European public. In order to meet Gorki personally, Helphand risked,
in the summer of 1902, a short, illegal visit to Russia. At the railway station in Sevastopol, on the Black Sea, the two men
concluded an agreement by which Helphand was empowered to
look after Gorki's author's rights in western Europe. He was to
M.R.-p
70
retain 20 per cent of the proceeds; Gorki was to receive onequarter of the remainder, and three-quarters were to go to the
funds of the Russian Democrat party. Helphand made the
agreement on behalf of his publishing house, and Gorki on behalf
of Znanie, a Russian agency which handled the financial side of
his literary work.32
The timing of the agreement was well chosen. Helphand and
Marchlewski thus acquired Gorki's latest play, The Lower Depths,
which they introduced to Germany only a few weeks later, with
great success. Max Reinhardt's famous Berlin production was
only the beginning: the play ran there for some five hundred
performances, and in the following four years it did the rounds
of almost all the provincial theatres.
But this was the first and last financial success of Helphand's
publishing house. The income from the play was soon used up,
partly to cover the subsequent losses incurred by the Verlag, and
partly by Helphand himself. Neither Gorki nor the Russian
Social Democrat party received any royalties. There the matter
rested until the end of 1905. During the revolution in Russia in
that year, however, Gorki and the Bolsheviks suddenly remembered the royalties Helphand owed them. As they were not forthcoming, charges against Helphand's integrity, personal and
financial, were raised. They reverberated, as we shall see,
through the Russian and the German socialist movements.
After the publishing house had run into difficulties, because of,
as Helphand put it, "unfavourable business trends', he lost all
interest in the venture. The October strikes in Russia then
indicated the high-water mark of the 1905 revolution: Helphand
packed his bags, and left Munich for St. Petersburg. Marchlewski
went on looking after the ailing business until, finally, he had to
liquidate it on his own.
Helphand behaved with total irresponsibility. On this occasion, the most serious flaws in his character lay revealed: an
absence of steadfastness and an utter lack of consideration for his
friends and colleagues. He regarded human ties in strictly utilitarian terms; he did not hesitate to sacrifice his friendship with
Marchlewski to a momentary advantage for himself. The end of
32
cf. M. Gorki, Lenin, Moscow, 1931, p. 7.
71
the publishing house broke a friendship of some fifteen years'

standing. Marchlewski never forgave Helphand.
If certain features in Helphand's character repelled his friends,
they had a disastrous effect on his family life. Like the affair of
Gorki's royalties, Helphand's private life later became a source of
severe embarrassment to him. This was a venue through which
he was frequently attacked; he was especially vulnerable to
criticism from his erstwhile friends, who had known him intimately. The story of Helphand's private life can be pieced together, mainly from information contained in these attacks
purposeful attempts at character assassination made in full view
of the publicand from his own counter-thrusts.
Helphand had married early, probably soon after his arrival in
Germany. One of his Socialist comrades described his wife as a
Russian midwife. Helphand himself wrote, many years later,33
that his wife had gone through many adversities with him,
including his expulsions from Prussiathis was in 1893and
from Saxony, five years later. But he added that the conditions
the family lived in became worse after the birth of their son, an
event which took place shortly before his departure for Russia
with Dr. Lehmann in 1899. On his return, his wife and son were
waiting for him in Munich, in a flat in the Bohemian suburb of
Schwabing. It was here that the Helphands spent the only quiet
interlude of their marriage, and that Alexander found time to
refer, in correspondence with his friends, to his wife, and their
small son Lazarus, nicknamed Zhenya. This was the flat and the
family which Lenin and Krupskaya knew so well. Nevertheless,
the couple had perhaps lived through too many hardships together, and these had not helped to strengthen the bonds between
them. The marriage broke up in 1904. When he later defended
himself against charges of irresponsibility, Helphand pointed out
that he had paid his wife 200 marks a month, half of his income
at the time. He could not have continued to do so for long.
He left for St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1905; after his departure, his former wife got into financial difficulties, and the
Kautskys began to send her fifty marks a month.
Helphand left his first wife, Tanya, for another woman: of her
In an article, 'Philister ber mich!' Die Glocke, 1919, vol. 2, p. 1335.
72
he wrote that 'she made no demands on me', and that her only
desire was to have a child by him. She went to Russia with him in
October 1905, but the political developments allowed them to
spend only a short time together in St. Petersburg. After the
failure of the revolution, she bore Helphand his second son in a
Tsarist prison. They returned to Germany separately, and
Helphand showed no interest in continuing their relationship.
Again, he retreated very swiftly, without giving much thought to
the consequences of his action.
His family ties were of the loosest kind. He cared little about
the later fortunes of his sons, and, indeed, very little can be
found out about them. It has been said that they were both
brought up in Russia, and made their careers under the Soviet
regime. In 1920, Helphand himself made a reference to a son
who lived in Russia, with whom he was not in touch. In the
nineteen-thirties, two diplomats appeared at Soviet embassies in
western Europe: rumour had it that they were Alexander Helphand's sons. Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister and
son-in-law of Mussolini, had frequent dealings, in the years 1939
and 1940, with a Leon Helfand, the Soviet Charge d'Affaires in
Rome. The last reference in Ciano's diary to the Soviet diplomat
reads:
July 14th, 1940. Helfand, who directed the Soviet Embassy in Rome for
so many months, has to return to Moscow, but he sniffs the odour of the
firing squad. This is why he has asked for help to escape to America,
where he will leave his family, and, I believe, stay himself. He is a keen
and intelligent man, whose long contact with bourgeois civilisation has
made a complete bourgeois out of him. Under the stress of imminent
misfortune all his Jewish blood came to the surface. He has become
extremely obliging and does nothing but bow and scrape. But he wishes
to save his family; he adores his daughter. He fears their deportation
more than death for himself. This is very human and very beautiful.34
Leon Helfand fled to the United States, where he later made a

considerable fortune, dealing in war surplus material. He recently
died in New York, under an assumed name.
Ievgenii Gnedin was the name of the other Soviet diplomat,
34
Ciano's Diary, edited by Malcolm Muggeridge, London, 1952, p. 276.
73
possibly the son of Helphand's second wife. In the nineteenthirties, he was the head of the Press Department in the Foreign
Ministry; about 1936, he was appointed First Secretary at the
Soviet Embassy to Berlin. He was then arrested during Stalin's
great purges; according to the reminiscences of his friend Ilya
Ehrenburg, he was released in 1955 and is still alive in the
Soviet Union.
We can only assume that these two men were Helphand's sons:
the difficulties involved in verifying this assumption show how
little inclined Helphand's relatives have been to identify themselves with his adventurous life.
Knowledge of his private affairs placed a sharp weapon in the
hands of his adversaries and his erstwhile friends. Karl Kautsky
did not hesitate, shortly after the end of the First World War, to
use his knowledge against Helphand. Kautsky's sharp personal
invective elicited a reply from Helphand, which he printed in his
own weekly, Die Glocke, and which he entitled 'Philistines
About Me'. The case he made in his defence didnot sound entirely convincing. He produced nothing but a pompous selfjustification. In his acid reply to his former friend, Helphand
attempted to create the impression that he had always been, in an
unphilistine manner, a good father. He only succeeded in conveying the simple truth about himself. And this was that his
family always came a poor second, and his political interests and
friends first. He wrote that 'I looked after my nearest and dearest
as often and as soon as I could, but I did not let material cares
and regards for my family hem in my intellectual work and my
political activity; I did not hesitate, when it was necessary, to
stake everything: my own life and the existence of my dependants.'35
And anyway, he did not think very highly of the institution:
"There is a great civilizing value in the family, but the bourgeois
family, as we know it now, is a nest of robbers. It is predatory and
it does not rest on concord; it is united only by the consciousness
which looks upon the rest of the world as its natural prey. There
is no meanness, no crime, that has not been committed in the
name of the family. The most brutal, the most horrible person
35
Die Glocke, 1919, p. 1336.
74
can be the nicest father of a family. When the biggest scoundrel

suffers from scruples of conscience, then the family serves as his
decoy.'
Such sentiments Helphand had entertained as a student at the
University of Basle. A family, a regular life, a steady income, were
not for him; his sights were set on higher aims. And Helphand's
vitality, his contempt for bourgeois morals, remained with him
throughout his life. The German socialists did not share this
attitude of mind. The scandals, the love affairs, all the colourful
rumours connected with the names of the socialist leaders were
things left behind with the past of the movement. What Lassalle
could do, Kautsky or Bebel would not and could not do. When
the Marxists came to dominate German socialism after the Gotha
Congress of Unity, they imposed on it not only a new political
doctrine, but also a new code of morality. It was puritan and, in
the German context, lower middle class; it tolerated no excess or
eccentricity. Many of his German comrades were unable to
understand a personality of Helphand's complexity and calibre,
and they labelled and dismissed him as a wicked libertine.
Helphand was too preoccupied with socialism, with writing,
with revolution; later, he even earned money for his political
pursuits. He always had an alternative to the German party, in
the Russian socialist movement. His interests were incompatible
with a settled, quiet life. He never missed an adventure of any
kind.
4
St. Petersburg, 1905
The year 1905 opened in Russia with a massacre. Early
in the afternoon of Sunday, 22 January, a large and orderly procession of workers halted in front of the Winter Palace: they had
come to ask the Tsar for a constitution and an improvement in
their living conditions. But the Tsar was away, and the soldiers
had their own way of dealing with demonstrations. The salvoes
fired by the troops stationed outside the palace killed some five
hundred people.
A general strike, affecting almost the whole of the Empire, was
the immediate outcome of the 'bloody Sunday' in St. Petersburg;
it was a spontaneous, unorganized protest by embittered workers.
The political climate of the country started to take a stormy turn:
in the following months strikes, mutinies, concessions from the
Tsar, followed each other in rapid succession. The small band
of agitators, who had hitherto worked underground, made their
public debut in Russia's politics.
As far as the Russian exiles in western Europe were concerned,
the news from home was, though welcome, rather unexpected.
They had badly needed the stimulant of the revolution, and their
apathy and depression were fast replaced by hectic activity. Yet
their exalted mood could not conceal the utter unpreparedness of
the Russian Social Democrats. The thesis Lenin had developed
during the discussion of the party programme in 1902that
capitalism had already been established in Russia, that the proletariat had to fight both the liberals and the government, that
the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat could now
be regarded as a practicable possibilityproved useless in the
situation in 1905; in addition, the party was divided, and was incapable of swift reaction to the new political developments.
Not so Helphand and Trotsky. They had anticipated these
76
events: again and again, they had stressed the 'actuality of revolution' long before its outbreak; they had never desisted in their
attempts to restore the unity of the party. Only now did it
become obvious how far they had advanced, in political planning,
beyond their comrades' concerns.
The first news from St. Petersburg reached Trotsky in Geneva.
He at once decided to return to Russia: on the way back, he made
a stop in Munich in order to consult Helphand. Trotsky and his
wife, Natalia Sedova, found their friend in a mood of exalted
optimism. But the younger man was impatient, and he spent only
a few days at the Schwabing flat, discussing the events in Russia.
Trotsky gave his friend the manuscript of his pamphlet, Do
devyatovo Yanvarya,1 to read: Helphand was very pleased with it,
and he told Trotsky: 4The events have fully confirmed this
analysis. Now, no one can deny that the general strike is the most
important means of fighting. The 22 January was the first political
strike, even if it was disguised under a priest's cloak. One need
add only that revolution in Russia may place a democratic
workers' government in power.'2 Trotsky left the manuscript of
his pamphlet with Helphand, who promised to write an intro-
duction for it, which would sum up their latest conversations;

Helphand thought that it should not now be difficult to make the
Mensheviks publish the two essays.
Helphand finished the introduction at the end of January, and
the Mensheviks published the pamphlet in Geneva, early in
March. Few manifestos have made such a profound impression
on the Russian socialists. For the first time in the history of the
Russian movement, the thesis was advanced that the proletariat
should at once grasp for political power, and that, as the vanguard
of the revolution, it had the right to form a provisional government.
Helphand's introduction was an impassioned plea for such a
government, and he developed convincing arguments in support
of his own and Trotsky's views. To begin with, he dealt with the
weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie as a class, and their inability
1
2
'Till the Ninth of January'according to the old Russian calendar; 22 January,

according to the new.
My Life, p. 167.
St. Petersburg, 1905 77
to play a leading role in the revolution. In the Tsarist empire

there existed no independent provincial towns in which a
politically active middle class could have flourished. The centralism of the Government in St. Petersburg produced only a sterile
and apathetic bureaucracy: it was politically insignificant, unconnected (this was not the case in Europe in 1848) by the ties of
class loyalty with the other liberal professionsdoctors, technicians, teachers. And Russia possessed no parliament which
might have contributed to the consolidation of the classes and
their interests.
Helphand's examination of the peasantry found them also
lacking in political significance. As an unorganized mass, the
peasants might increase anarchy, but could play no independent
political role. The logical conclusion followed: the proletariat
alone was in a position to assume the leadership of the revolution.
'Only the workers can complete the revolutionary change in
Russia. The revolutionary provisional government in Russia
would be a government of workers' democracy. If Social Democracy stands at the head of the revolutionary movement of the
Russian proletariat, then this government will be Social Democrat. If, in its revolutionary initiative, Social Democracy becomes
alienated from the proletariat, then it will become a faction of no
importance.'3
Only radical tactics were suitable, in Helphand's view, for the
achievement of this ambitious aim. The united opposition front
with the bourgeoisie, although essential until the fall of Tsarism,
should be regarded as a temporary alliance only. Helphand used
the example of the European revolutions of 1848 to point out the
danger that, sooner or later, the middle class would become
reconciled with Tsarism in order to deprive the workers of the
fruits of their revolutionary struggle. He therefore exhorted the
workers not to lay down their arms even after victory, and to be
prepared for a possible 'civil war'. He succinctly expressed his
tactical principles:
1. Not to mix up the organizations. March separately, strike united.
2. Not to forget their own [the workers'] political demands.
3
Do deyyatovo Tanvarya, p. IX.
78
3. Not to conceal the differences of interests [between the workers and

the middle class].
4. To watch their allies as much as their enemies.
5. To pay more attention to ensuring that the situation created by the
struggle is exploited, than to retaining one's allies.
Finally, Helphand discussed the aims the workers should

pursue through their provisional government. In this connexion
it became obvious that Helphand was not considering a purely
socialist revolution. He stressed the fact that Russia would go
through a bourgeois revolutionthe first stage of the classical
Marxist theorywhich would, paradoxically, be carried out not
by the middle class but by the workers. The introduction of
socialism was therefore not the aim of the revolution in Russia.
At most, it could achieve the establishment of a 'workers'
democracy'. This meant, for Helphand, the introduction of a
constitutional system which would guaranteeapart from the
usual civil rightsspecial class provisions, such as the eight-hour
day and other progressive social legislation. Helphand had the
example of German Social Democracy before his eyes: he
accepted the further development of capitalism in Russia as an
historical necessity, but he wanted to place restrictions on this
capitalism by the introduction of certain social rights. He
believed that, as a reward for their essential contribution to the
victory of the revolution, the Russian workers would acquire the
necessary room for the construction of their own mass organizations, an aim for which the proletariat in western Europe had
fought, only with partial success, for a number of decades. His
conception of the workers' democracy was, therefore, based upon
the right of the socialist organizations to exist and to develop
freely. Helphand was not thinking of a full and immediate transition to socialism.
Helphand's introduction to Trotsky's pamphlet ran to twelve
pages only, and it was a masterpiece of political analysis. He did
not hesitate to develop his argument to its logical conclusion:
none of his Russian comrades had dared to tread the territory
Helphand was now exploring. He demanded no less than that
the Russian socialist movement should concern itself with the
problem of the immediate acquisition of political power. At the

time, the socialist leaders were far from ready to take up the
challenge.
The Mensheviks who had only recently wanted to use the
'authority' of Helphand against their adversaries, were quite
unable to follow him. They could not accept his suggestion for a
provisional government; they thought he had overshot the target,
that his imagination had finally triumphed over his critical
faculties. Helphand himself, they argued, had had to admit that
Russia was going through a bourgeois revolution. It followed
therefore, that the middle class would have to assume the leading
role; the proletariat should renounce all its class demands, and
simply concentrate on the support of the opposition to the Tsarist
regime.
When the Mensheviks came to use quotations from Marx and
Engels against him, Helphand pointed out that the basic principle
of Marxist tactics lay in the exploitation, for the purposes of social
revolution, of every phase of historical development. He asked
his critics: 4Do you want to use the revolution in the interests of
the proletariat, or do you wish, like Mr. Struve, to exploit the
workers for the revolution?'4
The Bolsheviks too, were somewhat terrified by Helphand's
plan. They behaved as if Helphand had betrayed a carefully
concealed party secret. The immediate, though provisional
acquisition of power by the proletariat appeared such a highly
dangerous conception to Lenin, that he at once launched an
impassioned refutation. In the middle of March 1905 he wrote
in his newspaper, Vperiod: 'This cannot be, since the discussion
does not concern an accidental, transitory episode, but a revolutionary dictatorship of a certain duration, which could leave
certain traces in history. This cannot be, since only a revolutionary dictatorship, which is supported by a huge majority of
the nation, can be of a certain duration (naturally not absolutely,
but relatively). The Russian proletariat, however, now forms only
a minority of the nation.'
It was not Helphand's political programme, but the exhorta4
cf. Winfried Scharlau, Tarvus und Trockij: 1904-1914', Jahrbcher fr Geschichte

Osteuropas, October 1962, vol. 10, p. 365.
80
tion to the workers to grasp power, that appeared so monstrous to

Lenin. His own plans, which he described as a 'revolutionary
democracy' were in fact almost identical to those of Helphand.
Lenin also wanted to achieve certain class aims; he, also, wanted
to have certain working men's demands guaranteed by the
constitution. But he was irritated by the idea that the Russian
proletariat, a fraction of the population, should alone reach for
political power. He therefore preferred to work for a coalition
with the agricultural proletariat and with the left-wing petite
bourgeoisie. For him, the provisional government would largely
consist of the 'greatest variety of representatives of revolutionary
democracy'. Social Democracy would of course be represented,
but as a minority and not a majority.
The progress of the summer of 1905 was marked by endless,
hair-splitting polemics. In the meantime, the revolutionary
situation in Russia showed no signs of abating. On 6 August, the
Tsar finally made a fundamental concession to the movement of
opposition: an Imperial manifesto announced the Tsar's intention of establishing a consultative parliament, retaining his right
to dissolve it at will.
Again, the question of their attitude to the Duma precipitated
a violent debate among the exiles. Lenin regarded non-participation in the elections as a matter of principle. The Mensheviks, on
the other hand, recommended at least participation in the election
campaign. In this discussion as well, Helphand could not resist
the temptation to have his say. He supported neither the Bolsheviks nor the Mensheviks. He had, after all, preached participation to the German movement for some ten years: he now
recommended the same course of action to the Russian socialists.
To make full use of every opportunity that presented itself was
the axiom of his tactics; he was, however, as unsuccessful as was
the invitation of the Tsar, in convincing the Russian party
leaders to interest themselves in the forthcoming elections.
At this point, the first signs appeared that his polemics against
the two factions of the Social Democrat party had found some
response in Russia herself. The socialist agitators who actually
worked on the spot had never quite been able to follow the
various political subtleties that resulted from the split in the
party, and that proved so absorbing for the exiles. A man like
Parvus, who said that he was neither a Bolshevik nor a Menshevik, and that he was content to remain a Social Democrat,
appealed to the party workers in Russia. His name now stood for
a political programme: on 29 March 1905, the Bolshevik organ
Vperiod reported, significantly, that on the margin of the Menshevik group in St. Petersburg a new circle had formed: its
members called themselves 'Parvusists'. Ryazanov, who later
became the Director of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in
Moscow, and Ermanski, who was to find his place among the
Mensheviks during the war, were the leading figures in the circle.
Its official secession from the Menshevik group was expected to
be announced very shortly.
Although no independent organization was formed in the
following weeks, the existence of the circle indicated that
Helphand had accumulated considerable political capital in
Russia. It was of course not sufficient for him to make a bid for
supremacy inside the party: this much he certainly knew.
But it was an expression of confidence, an indication that he
would be welcome to take his place among the leaders of the
revolution, without any regard to party discipline. It was precisely in this position of an independent politician, who relied on
spontaneous support rather than on a party organization, that
Helphand made his mark, in the following months, in St.
Petersburg.
In the meantime, the political situation in Russia had deteriorated further. A printers' strike early in October was transformed,
unexpectedly, into a general strike. It again brought the workers
out into the streets in their thousands. On 13 October, a workers'
councilthe Sovietwas set up, and assumed the leadership of
the revolt. Trotsky was on the spot at the right time. After having
spent some time in Kiev and then underground in Finland, he
arrived in St. Petersburg in the middle of October. He now
assumed the leadership of the movement.
The October strike also provided the final motive for Helphand's return to Russia. He brushed aside the warnings of his
German comrades, that such an expedition might well end in
Siberia. He disregarded danger and difficulties, and relied on
82
luck and help from his friends. He needed as much of both as he

could get; for he did not have enough money for his trip to St.
Petersburg.
About 20 October, he unexpectedly turned up in the editorial
offices of the Leipziger Volkszeitung. Paul Lensch, the newspaper's editor-in-chief, and Konrad Haenisch, his assistant, could
hardly believe their eyes. Helphand was committing a criminal
offence, a breach of banishment from Saxony. In his reminiscences, Haenisch vividly described the encounter.
Is it really you? Where have you come from? Where are you going?
From Munich of course! The beast is finished! [This was a reference,
by Helphand, to the Tsarist regime.]
Is it really finished? Has it really gone so far? Can you now, without
danger . . .?
A crushing glance from the grey, enormous eyes, and a contemptuous
shrug of the shoulders were the only answer to such petit bourgeois
faint-hear tedness.
And the fare?
Advance for the book I shall write on my experiences. And I shall
experience a lotyou can rely on that!
And your publishing house?
The publishing house can go to the devil! What do I care about the
silly publishing house? Marchlewski will have to sort that one out. It is
the revolution now, my friend!
And he vigorously slapped me on the back.5
After cashing the cheque for advance royalties, Helphand left

for St. Petersburg. Again, he was travelling on a forged passport;
again, nothing untoward happened, and he reached the Russian
capital in the last days of October. Trotsky was there to welcome
him: their early arrival gave the two men, in contrast to the
leaders of the two party factions, a flying start. So far, none of
the exiles had braved the perils of returning home. Only after the
Tsar declared, on 30 October, a general amnesty for political
offenders, did the party leaders in western Europe feel safe
enough to make their way back to Russia. Martov, Lenin, and
Vera Zasulich reached St. Petersburg early in November;
5
K. Haenisch, Parvus, Ein Blatt der Erinnerung, Berlin, 1925, p. 21.
Axelrod was prevented from going by illness; Plekhanov was so

absorbed in his theoretical studies that he did not even consider
making the journey.
The workers of St. Petersburg needed leaders who were on
the spot, and it did not much matter whether they were Bolsheviks or Mensheviks, socialists or not. Helphand and Trotsky
knew this, and they used the situation to their advantage.
They assumed the leadership of the movement, and received
popular support: both of them became members of the Soviet;
Trotsky had taken part in its very first session. The two friends
knew what they wanted and they were energetic and skilful
enough to strengthen their leading positions. Their master-stroke
was the acquisition, early in November, of the hitherto insignificant liberal newspaper, the Ruskaya Gazeta, which they transformed into the first truly popular socialist daily in Russia.
Helphand now proved that he had not wasted his years of
apprenticeship on Bruno Schnlank's staff. Within a few days,
the vaguely liberal, deadly soporific Gazeta became a lively,
easily intelligible paper. Its price was one kopek onlythe
equivalent of the first English mass-circulation penny papers
and its sales shot up rapidly. At first its circulation went up from
the original 30,000 to 100,000; early in December, the sales of
the Ruskaya Gazeta reached the half-million mark. The Bolshevik
newspaper, the Novaya Zhizn, on the other hand, had to content
itself with a circulation of 50,000 copies. In the field of publicity,
Parvus and Trotsky had stolen the show.
And when the party leaders finally arrived in St. Petersburg,
they could do nothing but accept the situation. The split in the
Social Democrat party found little or no reflection in the Soviet;
it accommodated a variety of groups and their different political
ideas. It formulated no socialist programme: Lenin was at first
highly suspicious of its activities, and gave the Soviet his approval
only after long hesitation, when he convinced himself that there
was nothing he could do about Trotsky's and Helphand's leading
roles on the council.
The attitude to the Soviet of the Menshevik leaders, Martov
and Potresov, was cleverer than that of the Bolsheviks. Instead
of behaving with Lenin's grave reserve, they accepted the
84
situation, and then proceeded to invite Helphand and Trotsky to

take part in the foundation of their newspaper, Nachalo, successor
to the illegal Iskra. The two friends accepted the invitation in
principle, but put forward their own conditions. They insisted
that their contributions should not be subject to any form of
editorial control; they wanted to be able to express their opinions
freely, without regard to the political line of the party faction.
Martov and Potresov agreed in the end. They did not know, at
the time, how much they were giving away. Both Helphand and
Trotsky made unlimited and ruthless use of their freedom: they
turned the Nachalo into a militant anti-liberal organ. The Mensheviks, on the other hand, pursued the policy of alliance with
the liberals; they found themselves in an invidious position, in
which they had to connive, as one of them put it, at 'propaganda
for a rather risky idea', which ran directly counter to their own
views.
The activities of the two friends, Helphand and Trotsky, were
perfectly complementary. At the age of twenty-six, Trotsky
became the favourite of the crowds. His talent as an orator of
intense passion, his ability to persuade, gave him decisive sway
over the Soviet. It was not Krustalev-Nostar, a dull lawyer who
happened to be the president of the workers' council, but Trotsky, who directed its work. Parvus, 011 the other hand, remained
more in the background: in terms of influence, however, his own
position equalled that of Trotsky. He controlled an immensely
influential publicity apparatus, and he shaped the opinion of the
Soviet by his frequent pronouncements on points of programme.
In a leading article in the very first number of the Menshevik
Nachalo, Helphand made a lucid statement on the future course
of the revolution. He entirely disregarded the objections raised
by the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, and insisted again on
the necessity for a provisional workers' government, and for the
establishment of a workers' democracy. As the leaders of the
revolution, the workers had every right to make their own demands. Helphand again stressed that the introduction of the
eight-hour day, guaranteed by law, should become the central
aim of proletarian tactics. But only now did Helphand make it
clear that he did not regard the Russian revolution as an event
III. Helphand and Deutsch (centre, to left of guards) on the way to exile in Siberia, 1906
IV Rosa Luxemburg
85
completely isolated from the class struggle in western Europe;

he forged another link in his chain of thought. Russia, though an
industrially under-developed country, formed a part of the world
market, which, as a whole, was ripe for socialism. And since
capitalism formed a global unit, the revolution in Russia was
bound to have a world-wide effect. The workers of St. Petersburg would therefore become the spearhead of a social world
revolution. The demand for the eight-hour day was the spark
which would set the whole of Europe aflame. For more than a
decade, the German party had generated an intense agitation in
precisely the same direction; the achievement, by the Russian
workers, of this demand would become the signal for a revolt in
Germany. The fight for the eight-hour day, aimed against
absolutism as much as against liberalism, Helphand regarded as
the testing-ground of a genuinely working-class policy, which
would also become the first step towards a socialist world
revolution.
Many years later, Helphand accurately described his intentions during the revolutionary weeks of 1905, in the following
way:
My tactics during the revolution, in the year 1905 in Russia, were based
on the following point of departure: to pave the way for the revolutionary energy of the proletariat in the west. Although I knew very well
that socialism could not be achieved in Russia at the time, it was clear
to me that a victorious revolution, supported by the working masses,
would have to give the proletariat power, and I demanded that the
proletariat should use this power in the interests of the introduction of
a workers' democracy. 'And if the talk should come round to the establishment of a bourgeois parliamentary system in Russia only', I told
my Russian friends, then I would have quietly remained in Germany,
where this parliamentary system had already a rather long history
behind it.6
Indeed, early in November, it looked as if the workers might

succeed in achieving a decisive political break-through. The Tsar
was cautiously avoiding an open trial of strength with the Soviet;
A he middle class, in so far as it was politically active, declared
6
Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, pp. 9-10.

M.R.-G
86
its solidarity with the workers' demands for a democratic and

constitutional order. Some of the industrialists in St. Petersburg
even paid the wages of the workers on strike, to encourage them
to carry on the struggle. Following an order by the Soviet, St.
Petersburg editors no longer sent their newspapers for inspection
by the Imperial censor. The Russians had never experienced so
much freedom in their history.
The socialist leaders clearly enjoyed the power that had fallen,
quite unexpectedly, into their hands. For a few weeks, men who
had previously borne the hardships and ignominy of exile, banishment, or imprisonment, were able to act as the representatives of
a new Russia. Not all of them assumed their new role lightly.
Lenin found it especially difficult to abandon the hazards, as well
as the anonymous security, of illegal underground work, and to
venture into the harsh light of public activity. Helphand and
Trotsky, on the other hand, were in their element. From the
assembly rooms of the Soviet, at the Technological Institute, they
rushed to their editorial offices, from party meetings they hurried
to the political salons, where they monopolized all interest. They
stood head and shoulders above the crowd. They were the men
of the day, well known and respected.
Helphand was in a state of permanent elation. The prospect of
victory stimulated him to boundless activity. Outside his political
interests, he found time to take enthusiastic pleasure in the
cultural life of the capital. On one occasion he bought fifty
tickets for a satirical revue, which he had greatly enjoyed. But
he was denied the pleasure of passing them on to his friends; the
policemen who arrested him could make no sense of their curious
find in one of Helphand's pockets. Trotsky, who told the story in
his reminiscences, added: "They did not know that Parvus did
everything on a large scale.'
Helphand bought the theatre tickets with the payment he had
received for a collected Russian edition of his theoretical writings:
ever since his arrival in St. Petersburg, he had taken great care
over the arrangements for this book. He knew that it would
strengthen his position in the Russian socialist movement, and he
may well have hoped that, in the political circumstances, the
publication might bring him a good profit. It was easy to find a
publisher; but the collection of his studies, which had appeared

in many German newspapers over the years, presented a more
difficult problem. It took Helphand some time to solve it. In
the end he wrote to Motteler, one of the senior members of the
German party, who had earned for himself the nickname the
'red postmaster' by efficiently organizing, in the eighteen-eighties,
the smuggling of illegal socialist literature from Switzerland into
Germany. Motteler found the articles, and sent them to Helphand's publisher in St. Petersburg.
Early in 1906, two volumes of selected studies by Helphand
appeared, under the title "Russia and the Revolution'.7 They
contained his most important articles from Iskra, as well as
studies from Sdchsische Arbeiterzeitung and Neue Zeit: the
reprinting of them impressively proved Helphand's originality as
a prolific socialist writer.
Nevertheless, before the two volumes were published, the
sands of the revolution had started to run out. It seems very
likely that the intensive publicity for the eight-hour day, conducted by Helphand and Trotsky, made a large contribution to
the difficulties that the revolutionary leaders now faced. The
demand had of course been made before the two friends
launched their campaign; they, however, had raised it to the
focal point of the revolutionary programme. Nothing else could
have appealed so greatly to the imagination of the wrorkers in
1905. On 8 November, several working-class districts in St.
Petersburg made an attempt, on their own initiative, to introduce
the eight-hour day. Two days later, workers employed in heavy
industry made the same demand. The Soviet then passed a
resolution, by acclaim, to the same effect.
Against the opposition of the Mensheviks, and despite the
numerical weakness of the proletariat, Helphand and Trotsky
pursued the policyimplied in the campaign for the eight-hour
dayof separation of the workers from the liberal opposition.
Their ultimate aim was the achievement of power, at least temporarily, in the state; their instrument was the general strike. The
middle class reacted promptly. The unilateral introduction of the
eight-hour day occasioned a sharp clash between the bourgeoisie
Rossiya i revolyutsiya and V riadakh germanskoe sotsial-demokratii, St. Petersburg, 1906.
88
and the workers' movement. The industrialists replied to the

great strike on 20 November by locking out some 100,000
workers. The policy of the Soviet, now clearly directed both
against the Government and against the bourgeoisie, led to the
ultimate trial of strength.
Both the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks feared that the
workers might become politically isolated, and they advocated
moderation. For Helphand and Trotsky, on the other hand, the
growing pressure exerted by the middle class against the policies
of the Soviet, was a certain sign that the bourgeoisie was about to
betray the revolution. Instead of avoiding an overestimate of the
forces at their disposal, and then countering the middle-class
opposition in a less rigid manner, Helphand and Trotsky continued with their policy of further intensification of the class
struggle. They contemptuously dismissed the proposal, published
in the liberal newspaper Rus, that the representatives of the
Soviet as well as of the liberal parties should form a revolutionary
government. They were convinced that for the 'stoppage of
production in the whole country the proletariat was not dependent on the support of the bourgeoisie', and that they could
therefore afford to turn down the offer of a coalition: at this point
in the revolution, the possibility of political co-operation no
longer existed. They believed that victory could be achieved by
rapid advance, rather than by entrenchment. At the same time,
the two friends looked beyond Russia, towards the socialist
parties of western Europe, which would follow Russia's example,
and which would make it possible for the Russian proletariat 4to
stretch a permanent revolutionary chain between the immediate
and the final aims'.8
It became quite obvious, early in December 1905, to what
extent Parvus and Trotsky were misled by their own calculations.
They overestimated the revolutionary preparedness of western
Europe as much as they underestimated the ability of the coalition between the middle class and the Tsarist system to strike
back. They had overlooked the fact that the insignificance of the
Russian provincial towns, as well as the political ignorance of the
muzhiki, did not necessarily favour the revolutionaries. An army
8
Trotsky in Nachalo, No. 10.
89
of peasants knew no difference between a foreign enemy and

their own people, once the orders to shoot were given: this factor
Helphand and Trotsky had entirely neglected. St. Petersburg
was not the whole of Russia, and despite support from Moscow
and some industrial towns in the provinces, the revolutionary
movement did not succeed in severely disrupting the administration of the state.
By the beginning of December, the days of freedom were
definitely numbered. On 5 December, Count Witte's Government resolved to embark on a trial of strength with the Soviet:
Krustalev-Nostar, its president, and several other members of its
executive committee were arrested. The Soviethaving elected
Trotsky as its new presidentwas no longer capable of countering force by force. The weapon of the mass strike was fast becoming blunt, and it could not be used indiscriminately. Instead, the
Soviet chose the method of passive resistance.
In the meantime, the Peasants' Union proposed to the Soviet
that it should support the Union's declaration for a tax strike,
and for a withdrawal of all deposits from the banks. The Soviet
set up its own commission, which was to supplement the suggestions of the Union and to produce a general protest against the
Government. Helphand was entrusted with the preparation of
the first draft; after consultations by the special commission of
the Soviet, a financial manifesto was distributed, on 14 December,
to St. Petersburg newspapers.
In popular languageit revealed Helphand's authorshipthe
manifesto fiercely attacked the financial abuses current in Tsarist
Russia. The Tsar was obstructing the convocation of the constitutional assembly, it was pointed out, because he feared any
outside control of the state. By cooking accounts and by foreign
loans, the Government was robbing the nation and hindering the
free development of trade, industry, and transport. There was
only one way out: to deprive the Government of its income, and
to overthrow Tsarism. The manifesto ordered the following
measures: 'The payments of amortization as well as all payments
to the state are to be refused. In all business transactions, as well
as the payment of wages and salaries, gold must be demanded,
and sums under five roubles [must be paid] in ringing coin of full
90
weight. All deposits are to be withdrawn from the savings banks

and from the state bank, and the payment of the whole sum
should be in gold. The people have never given the government
either confidence or full powers. At the present moment the
government treats its own country as an occupied territory. We
therefore resolve that the debts the government incurred in the
course of its open and ruthless war on the people will not be
repaid.'9
On the following day15 Decemberthe manifesto was published by all the important socialist and liberal newspapers in St.
Petersburg. They were all confiscated, and the members of the
Soviet were arrested. The Government launched an all-out
attack on the workers' council; its last session ended in the cells
of the Saints Peter and Paul Fortress.
By chance, Helphand avoided arrest that day: he was away
from the chamber when the police broke in. He was by no means
ready to give up the fight. The formation of a new cadre of
leaders was essential, and Helphand at once set to work. Under
the most difficult circumstances he succeeded in bringing together
the second Soviet. It was an improvised body, consisting of 200,
instead of the original 400, members; the full number met only
on one occasion. The actual work was carried out by the executive
committee; Viktor Semenon, Boris Goldman, Timofei Smirnov,
and Eugenii Frenkel were its leading lights, and Helphand its
president.
As a spectacle, with continuous ovations, revolutionary songs,
and other shows of high-spirited enthusiasm, this assembly could
not compete with the first Soviet. The Tsarist Government had
no intention whatever of prolonging the agony of the revolution.
The Soviet was forced to operate underground, with very limited
means at its disposal. Its original organ, Izvestia, appeared twice
only, in time to inform its readers of the formation of the second
Soviet. Severnyi Golos, successor to both Nachalo and Novaya
Zhizn, could also be published only twice before it was confiscated. A further attempt to re-establish contact with the workers
it took the form this time of the Mash Golosdid not succeed
either. In addition, the Soviet was short of money. The coffers
9
P.Gorin,Ocherki poistorii sovetov rabotchikh delegatovv
1905, 2nd ed., Moscow, 1930, p.363.
were empty, and it was impossible to ask the workers to make any
more sacrifices. Lev Deutsch, the past-master of escape, offered to
visit western European capitals in order to collect some funds.
He did not get very far. Berlin was his first stop, and it was there
that he received the news that the striking workers were beyond
help. He returned to St. Petersburg, resigned, with a 4few thousand
roubles'.10
In spite of these difficulties, the executive committee decided
to declare, on 20 December, a protest strike against the arrest of
the original Soviet. The proclamation of the strike was addressed
to "the whole nation': "Citizens! Freedom or slavery, a Russia
ruled by the nation, or a Russia plundered by a band of robbers.
That is the question. . . . It is nobler to die fighting than to live
in slavery.'11
The opening stages of the strike seemed full of promise. Some
83,000 workers came out on strike in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and
thirty-two provincial towns that followed suit. Yet the weaknesses
of the cause soon became evident. The workers were exhausted,
and they had had enough of strikes: they had come out three
times within nine weeks. And economic measures alone were no
longer sufficient in face of the armed might of the state. The
situation appeared to Helphand to demand an armed uprising,
a brutal civil war for power in the state.
After four or five days the strikers in most of the provincial
towns ran into trouble; only in Moscow, under Bolshevik leadership, the first street fights were taking place. In the meantime,
the executive committee in St. Petersburg was conducting an
embittered debate about the tactics of the revolution. Helphand
made an impassioned plea for an armed uprising. But the Soviet
had no arms at its disposal, it had no military experience, and its
president developed fantastic plans as to the ways in which this
difficulty could be overcome. He intended to disarm the police
by using water-hoses; the morale of the army was to be undermined by propaganda, and the troops were to take the side of the
workers.
Helphand was spinning revolutionary dreams; he was fast
11
10
L. Deutsch, Viermal entflohen, Stuttgart, 1907, p. 117.
Gorin, op. cit., p. 375.
92
losing contact with political realities. This was accompanied by

a sharp decline in his authority on the executive committee of the
Soviet. He was incapable of taking the place of Trotsky. The
members of the committee came to regard Helphand as a confused
theorist, an ineffective intellectual. He was unable to convince
and inspire. He possessed none of the charismatic qualities of a
great leader: he had a good deal of self-confidence, but he was
unable to inspire confidence in others.
After a long discussion the committee agreed, in principle,
to his proposal for an armed uprising. In the present situation,
however, it could not be carried out, and the committee also
resolved to break off the strike on 1 January. Yet another proclamation informed the workers that the disruptive economic
strike was no longer adequate for this phase of the revolution.
They were further instructed to arm themselves for an uprising,
and to prepare for the future struggle.
Helphand, who knew that the workers in Moscow were still
fighting on the barricades, registered his protest against the
resolution, and resigned his office in the Soviet. He decided that
his place was not in the chair on a committee, but at a desk in a
newspaper office, and he made the decision at the right time.
While Helphand was trying to produce another newspaper, the
executive committee of the second Soviet was arrested, on
16 January. Once again, chance helped him to escape arrest.
What Helphand, however, did not know, was that important
material had fallen into the hands of the police when the Soviet
was arrested. The security officials were able to establish the
details of his work on the executive committee. His name was
put on the list of wanted men.12 Helphand nevertheless succeeded in living underground until the beginning of April
1906. He then produced a pamphlet, which somehow escaped
the censor's attention, entitled 'The Present Political Situation
and the Prospects for the Future'.13 In it, Helphand attempted to
draw up a balance-sheet of the revolution.
He anticipated a criticism which was yet to be madethat he
12
Police report of 8 July 1906, in 1905 god v Peterburge, Moscow and Leningrad, 1925,
pp. 159-61.
13
Nastoiashtshee politicheskoe polozhonie i vidy budushchee', reprinted in Rossiya i
revolyutsiya, pp. 212-25.
and Trotsky, by their agitation for the eight-hour day, had led
the revolution into a blind alleyand he insisted that sooner or
later an armed clash with the Government was inevitable. He
added that the workers themselves had indicated the rhythm of
the movement, and that the Soviet had then assumed the leading
role: 'We were nothing but the strings of a harp, on which the
storm of the revolution played. . . . Whether or not we ...
had made mistakes, one thing is certain: the attacks by the
government were not aimed at us because of our real or imaginary
mistakes, but because of the strength and decisiveness that was our
own.'
Helphand wrote of the Soviet in terms of the highest praise.
The fact that it had not formally adopted a socialist programme
appeared to him especially remarkable. It united the workers not
through agitation but by practical work, and, in the same way, it
acquainted them with the aims of socialism. The Soviets were not,
for Helphand, a thing of the past: they would have to be used in
the future, since cin the St. Petersburg Soviet an organization
came into being which worked not only destructively, but also
constructively. One felt here, that a force was being created and
developed which would be capable of undertaking the reconstruction of the state.'
With prophetic insight, Helphand hinted at a possibility
which, eleven years later, was put into practice by Lenin, but
with a difference: in 1917 the Soviet did not 'reconstruct' the
stateit completely replaced the old machinery. Nor did Helphand have any intention of substituting the national assembly by
the Soviets: workers' councils inside a workers' democracy were
part of his idea of the future. By 1917, Lenin had acquired a
keener understanding of the realities of political power: he, and
not Helphand, put the revolutionary ideas into practice.
And then the police finally caught up with Helphand; he was
arrested early in the morning of 3 April 1906. He was now on the
way to becoming a fully-fledged Russian revolutionary; most of
his friends had been arrested at least once. Imprisonmenta
term of 'sitting' in jailor banishment to Siberia were integral
parts of the experience of several generations of rebels against the
Tsarist State. It was their school, their social club, even a kind of
94
holiday. Though the prisons were often unpleasant, and the

demoralizing effect of banishment deep, their standards can
hardly be compared with those developed later in the century,
with the organized brutality of the great modern totalitarian
states against their citizens. In prison, Trotsky was able to write
some of his most ruthless indictments of Tsarism; during his
banishment to Siberia, Lenin went out shooting ducks; Lev
Deutsch simply left when he got tired of captivity.
After his escape from Russia, Helphand proudly carried with
him a picture of himself, together with Trotsky and Deutsch. It
could have been taken by a fashionable photographer in St.
Petersburg. The three friends all looked well, respectable in their
dark suits and stiff collars above the rich cravats, completely selfassured. The picture was in fact taken in a Tsarist prison, with a
warder in attendance.
On the day of his arrest, Helphand was brought from his
hiding-place to the local police station; the long, untidy room
was heated by a large tile oven. A servant was tending it, stuffing
piles of tightly packed paper on to the grate: Helphand realized
that copies of a revolutionary pamphlet, written by a friend of
his, were keeping him warm.14 Some time after lunch, which was
obligingly fetched for him by a policeman, Helphand was transferred to a prison. And on the way there, an illuminating incident
occurred.
He was locked up in a carriage which, in his own words, was
'not without claims to elegance', but which was battered, dirty,
with torn upholstery: the kind of carriage used for 'third-class
funerals'. He was accompanied by one guard only, and he contemplated escape. He realized that he would have to overpower
the guard, knock him out, perhaps even kill him. Helphand's
musings suggest that he did not feel his situation to be desperate.
He was, after all, not a murderer but a writer, and he cautioned
himself: 'Be careful, this is not a newspaper article you are
writing, you are playing with a human life!' He did nothing,
chatted with the guard, and, after a while, they both arrived
14
Parvus, In der russischen Bastille whrend der Revolution, Dresden, 1907. This part of the
chapter is mainly founded on Helphand's only detailed autobiographical fragment,
based on a diary he kept during his imprisonment.
safely at the Cross Prison. It was in the Viborg quarter of

St. Petersburg and contained a thousand individual cells.
No. 902 was a pleasant place in most respects, rather like a
room in a comfortable provincial hotel. There was electric light
there, and central heating, but no plumbing of any kind. In a
corner of the cell stood the inevitable parasha, a bucket half
filled with water, and a source of discomfort, especially in the
summer months, to the inmates. An icon was hanging in the
corner, diametrically opposite to the parasha; above the table
there was a list of rules and regulations, and, on the reverse side,
a price-list of the articles that prisoners could purchase at their
own expense. Its longest section, which gave a good choice of
chocolates and sweets, bore witness to the fact that the establishment was often visited by members of the younger set of the
Russian intelligentsia. There was a good library in the prison, and
Helphand soon started to write: it gave him rare pleasure 'not to
have to synchronize the tempo of thinking with the pace of the
printing presses'.
The first interrogations were concerned with Helphand's
identity; no formal accusation was made. Helphand produced his
forged Austro-Hungarian passport, this time in the name of Karl
Wawerk. It was no use: from their agents' reports, and from the
papers confiscated on the occasion of the arrest of the Soviet, the
police knew that they had the right man.
The days of Easter 1906 were the last Helphand spent at the
comfortable Cross Prison. He was woken up one night by the
chime of bells; the light in his cell was on. The warder stood at
the door, and he brought the prisoner the traditional offerings of
the Russian Orthodox Easter: coloured eggs, white bread, milk
curd with raisins. Helphand realized that the festivities had
reached their point of culmination. The Easter greeting set off a
characteristic chain of thought in Helphand's mind.
'Christ has arisen! The Redeemer has left this world of
martyrdom and tears. Himself steeped in pain, He forgave everybody. Yes, so it should have been. So it was at the time when the
priests of the Christian church were themselves persecuted and
thrown into prisons, as we are now. That was at the time when
they shared their board and lodgings with the poor. Christ has
96
arisen. They are now singing in fat voices, thinking of the drinks
and hams waiting for them at home.'15
Soon after Easter, Helphand was transferred, together with
Trotsky, to the ill-famed prison in the Saints Peter and Paul
Fortress. It was a change for the worse after Cross Prison. The
cells were cold, without ventilation, and badly lit; for the first
time since his arrest, Helphand had to change into regulation
uniform. Built in 1747, the Fortress was one of the oldest of the
official buildings in the capital; although it contained the Imperial
Mint and the tombs of the Romanov Tsars within its walls, it was
best known as a prison for the elite of the political offenders.
Chernyshevski, Bakunin, and many other illustrious names of the
Russian revolutionary movement had been its inmates before
Helphand and Trotsky.
The prison was difficult to endure not because of the inhumanity of the wardersthere was very little of itbut because
its inmates were kept in strict solitary confinement. Selfdisciplined men like Trotsky easily came to terms with the
imposed solitude. When he left the 'hermetically sealed celP, he
did so with a tinge of regret. 'It was so quiet there, so eventless,
so perfect for intellectual work.' He soon transformed the room
into a monastic cell; it was rather untidy, full of manuscripts and
books. It was here that Trotsky worked out the first draft of his
theory of permanent revolution.
Helphand, on the contrary, could not endure the new prison;
the feeling of oppressive isolation from the outside world fell on
him as soon as he had said good-bye to Trotsky, before entering
his cell. In the tomb-like peace, Helphand had to fall back on his
own resources, and he found them lacking. He relapsed into selfpity, dreams, sentimentality; he thought of himself as a helpless
victim of Tsarist brutality. He paced up and down the cell like a
wild animal, counting the minutes and the hours, trying to
nourish illusions of a political amnesty which would bring him
back to the world of the living. Self-analysis did not help: on
the contrary, Helphand came to resent his fate bitterly. His
former life in Europe, the adventures and the hectic activity, had
left their mark, and they made it impossible for Helphand to
15
ibid., p. 40.
97
remain satisfied with his own company. Hell for him was solitude.
The best he could do was to keep a pathetic diary, in which he
registered his moods and impressions. His life was shaken down
into a new pattern: it was later described, fittingly, as 'parvocentric'.
Early in May his spirit began to break. The lack of air, of
light, of physical and mental exercise brought him to the brink
of madness. He made frequent attempts to improve the conditions
of his imprisonment, and his efforts resulted in a number of
clashes with the prison administration. He believed that the
authorities were open to persuasion by rational means, and he
expended a lot of nervous energy in this way; an experienced
revolutionary would have known better. Only after some three
months' solitary confinement, his position somewhat improved.
Books were issued three times a week; letters were handed out,
and there was a twenty-minute walk every day. Helphand was
finally able to overcome the crisis of the last weeks.
He was convinced that he would be tried together with the
other members of the Soviet, and he energetically started to make
preparations for his defence. He knew that political trials could
be used for the purposes of political propaganda; he would turn
the tables on the prosecution, and convert the accusations against
himself into an accusation of the Tsarist regime. When he wrote
his speech, he constantly thought of its effect outside the courtroom.
In drafting the speech for his defence Helphand was much
more cautious than Trotsky, who made no attempt to dispute the
accusation that the Soviet had been preparing an armed uprising,
a forcible overthrow of the established order. Helphand hinted
repeatedly at the rift between the Government and the people:
there was no cohesion, no unanimity between them; then came
the clash in October 1905; even after the publication of the
Imperial Manifesto on 31 October, conceding the Russian people
certain constitutional rights, there existed, in Helphand's words,
no government, but only abuses of government'.16 The people
therefore regarded the Soviet as their own representative
body: it never prepared an armed uprising. For reasons of
16
Parvus, op. cit., p. 112.
98
self-protectionagainst the mob, the reactionary Black Hundreds organization, the Cossacks, the police, the armythe
workers needed arms, and they were resolved to acquire them.
But they in fact never did. 'I will tell you where these arms
were,' wrote Helphand, 'they were in the barracks, in the hands
of the troops. The reactionary government had on its side
the rifles, but the workers wanted to win influence over the
minds that controlled these rifles. They wanted to convince the
soldiers to defend, side by side with them, those political
demands which I have mentioned many times in the course of
my speech.'17
Helphand was, however, unable to complete the draft. At the
end of July, the leaders of the Soviet were transferred to a civil
prison for interrogation. Although he had succeeded in smuggling
his manuscripts out of the fortress, he could no longer find an
opportunity to carry on his work. There was a good deal of
activity going on in the prison, and he was glad to see his friends
again: his concern with the forthcoming trial abated. Lev
Deutsch was there, and with him, Helphand made the first plans
to escape. The fact that they came to nothing did not much
depress the two conspirators. The doors of the cells were locked
only at night, and in the day-time, the prisoners could move about
freely. And there was distraction from the outside: Rosa Luxemburg, who had taken part in the revolution in Warsaw, and who
had just been released from prison there, visited her friends in
St. Petersburg. She reported to Kautsky that 'the fat one has
lost weight, but he is full of energy and zest'.18
In the meantime, the Government decided not to prosecute the
members of the second Soviet: the honour of a public trial was
granted only to the leaders of the first. Helphand was not given
an opportunity of delivering his defence speech; he received an
administrative sentence only. It was not very stiff: three years'
banishment in Siberia. He was not very proud of it, and did not
mention it in the account, published in the following year in
Dresden, of his imprisonment. He probably regarded three years
17
18
ibid., p. 128.
A letter from Rosa Luxemburg to Karl Kautsky, 13 August 1906, in 'Einige Briefe
Rosa Luxemburgs und andere Dokumente', Bulletin of the International Institute of
Social History, Amsterdam, 1952, No. i, pp. 9-39.
in Siberia as an inadequate reward for the role he had played in

the revolution.
On 4 September 1906, the adventurous trip to Siberia began.
The party, which left St. Petersburg that morning under military
supervision, was a colourful one. Apart from a small group of the
'politicals'among them, Helphand and Deutschit consisted
of some fifty criminal prisoners; Turuchansk, in the Yenisei
province near the Arctic circle, was their destination. Helphand
was glad he had Deutsch with him; he could hardly have a better
companion. They were both well provided with the means for
escape: concealed in their small bundles of linen there were
glazier's diamonds, forged passports, addresses of local party
agents and, above all, enough ready cash. They had no intention
of accompanying their party very far.
They stopped at Krasnoyarsk, where they were supposed to
board a steamer, which would take them down the River Yenisey.
Here, Deutsch went on a shopping expedition, from which he
never returned. Helphand had to wait a few days before he
succeeded in escaping; by then, the party had already passed the
town Yenisey, far in the north. He plied the guards with drinks,
and only when they were well past caring, Helphand and some
other of his comrades took their leave. Guided by a local peasant,
they made their way, across the deserted, desolate taiga, back to
Krasnoyarsk. The local station of the Trans-Siberian Railway
was heavily guarded; a friend bought a ticket for Helphand, who
then boarded the train disguised as a muzhik. He of course
travelled third class, and in order to remain undetectedthere
was an armed guard on the trainhe had to mix with the peasants.
He was safe with them, but nauseated. He shared not only their
vodka but also their dirt and their smell; direct contact with the
people was no source of inspiration for Helphand. After he had
got through the most heavily guarded territory, he changed at the
house of some friends.
As a respectable gentleman in a second-class carriage, Helphand returned to St. Petersburg. Instead of a hiding-place, he
moved into a hotel. Although he was using a forged passport, the
police did not let him rest in peace. A comrade warned him in
time; he could not return to his hotel, and he left the capital
100
without his luggage. His stay in Russia was becoming too perilous
for his liking. At the beginning of November, carrying only a
brief-case crammed with manuscripts, he crossed the frontier into
Germany.
He never returned to the country of his birth.
5
Strategist without an Army
Despite the high expectations of many socialists,
especially those who took part in the events in St. Petersburg,
the shock-wave of the Russian revolution did not travel far westwards. The underground rumble in the east evoked hopes and
fears, but not a revolutionary mood. Instead of fighting on the
barricades, the peoples of Germany and Austria-Hungary chose
their new parliamentary representatives. The election campaign
in Germany began to warm up early in the winter of 1906. It
became fierce, and revolved around the crisis inside the group of
the middle-class parties, leaving the Social Democrats undisturbed
to increase their growing strength. Colonial policy, and a trial of
strength between Bernhard von Blow, the Reich Chancellor,
and the Catholic Centre Party, proved the most absorbing subjects in Germany's politics.
The Social Democrats were allotted an unrewarding role in
the campaign. The party would not and could not come to an
agreement with the middle-class Centre; the quarrel inside
the bourgeois camp concerning colonial policy, compelled the
socialists to face certain problems for which Marxist theory
offered no unambiguous solution. Should the party simply oppose
colonial expansion? Were all these activities outside Europe
nothing but a reactionary adventure? Could socialism offer an
alternative policy, incorporating the demands of class struggle?
The party executive was disinclined to give a clear answer
to any of these questions. It meticulously avoided pronouncements on the major foreign themes. Hesitation and
confusion as to the aims of the party were the result. The
workers in its local organizations were on their own, having to
develop, as best they could, a policy suited to the regional circumstances.
M.R.-H
102
Helphand returned to Germany at the right time. The political

excitement was entirely to his liking, and he continued his trip
from the frontier to the Ruhrgebiet. It was a brave decision. In
the Ruhr territory Helphand was under Prussian legislation, and
he would have been unlikely to have got away with a short term
of imprisonment had he been caught in the act of a 'breach of
banishment'. The German Government was at that time extraditing Russian revolutionaries, and he might well have found
himself on his way to Siberia for the second time.
In Dortmund, Helphand's friend Konrad Haenisch, as the
editor of the Dortmunder Arbeiterzeitung, carried the main burden
of the election campaign in the west of Germany. Haenisch was
the son of a Prussian civil servant: an unusual background for a
left-wing socialist. He came into contact with the movement as a
young student; his family retaliated, and, to cure him of his
political convictions, had him confined to a lunatic asylum. After
his release, young Haenisch at first worked on the distribution
side of the Leipziger Volkszeitung, and then as an assistant in the
editorial office of the same newspaper. Paul Lensch, Rosa
Luxemburg, and Franz Mehring guided his first steps in socialist
journalism. In the middle of the eighteen-nineties, at the height
of the agrarian debate, he met Helphand for the first time. A
young man of an inflammable, yet extremely obstinate temper,
he took Helphand's side in such a violent manner that his
comrades in Leipzig nicknamed him 'Parvulus'. He never lost his
pride in the name. After the turn of the century, Haenisch moved
to Dortmund, where he stayed until 1910, editing the local
socialist newspaper.
His comrades regarded Haenisch as a militant partisan of the
left-wing group around Parvus and Rosa Luxemburg. Haenisch,
with his heavy, stocky figure, his flaming red beard, his vitality,
added to their policy a good dose of revolutionary romanticism of
his own. As a prodigal son of the middle class, he found the
greatest satisfaction in parading before the bourgeoisie its gravediggerthe proletariat.
On a dull day in the middle of December, Haenisch found a
brief note on the desk at his office. It read: 'Dear Haenisch, I will
look you up soon. If any letters arrive for Peter Klein, they are
103
for me. See you soon. But pleasediscretion at all costs. Yours
ever, Peter' 1
Haenisch had no doubt as to who this Peter Klein in fact was.
A few days later, Helphand arrived in Dortmund; he had with
him nothing but an old brief-case. Haenisch was glad to see his
friend unchanged: he was confident and energetic, his imprisonment in Russia had left no mark on him. When Haenisch asked
how he had survived the time in the lion's den, Helphand replied
modestly: 'It's not really worth talking about.' But he could not
resist adding, perhaps to keep up his own courage, perhaps to
please his friend: 'But the fact that in the prison, during the
journey, and on the flight I did not waste a single day without
working hard for the good of the party, of that I am really proud.'2
He was prepared to work hard again, this time in Germany.
He told his friend straight away that he came to Dortmund to
help him with the election campaign, and that he needed a
refuge, safe from the police. Haenisch was glad to do his friend a
favour. He was very busy on the newspaper, and he was happy
to have a man of Helphand's standing to work with him. He told
only two of his closest assistants that Helphand was staying in his
flat; during this time, Haenisch got to know his friend better and
to like him more. Helphand got on very well with Haenisch's
children, and he derived as much pleasure as they did from
buying them presents. He obviously enjoyed other people's
children more than his own.
He was of course unable to do his work for the Arbeiterzeitung
publicly; his contributions appeared unsigned. For eight weeks
Helphand lectured his comrades on the problems of home and of
foreign policy. Blow and the Centre Party, which was particularly well entrenched in the Catholic Rheinland-Westfalen, were
to be fought with their own weapons. In order to put down his
ideas on the 'Hottentot elections' in a longer study, Helphand
retired to a boarding-house near Dsseldorf. Early in 1907, the
pamphlet was ready for the printers. But the Reichstag Elections
and the Working Class3 appeared too late to affect socialist
agitation at the federal level. The party was bitterly disappointed
1
3
2
K. Haenisch, Parvus, p. 24.
ibid., p. 25.
Die Reichstagwahlen und die Arbeiterschaft.
104
with the election returns. Although more people had in fact

voted socialist, it lost a number of mandates because of an
unfavourable division of constituencies. The socialists had
won an empty victory: they had gained votes, but lost political
influence.
Even after the elections, the problem of colonial policy
appeared, to Helphand, still important enough to be examined
in detail. The election pamphlet made enough money for a fortnight's holiday on the Lago di Guarda in North Italy. Helphand
needed the peace the hotel room provided, and his work made
rapid progress. After the nerve-racking months in Russia, and
after the excitement of the German elections, he greatly appreciated the opportunity to record, unhurriedly and without
any kind of pressure, his thoughts. The satisfaction he had failed
to achieve as a practical politician, he was now able to derive
from his writing.
His interest in colonial policy dated back to the eighteennineties; he was one of the first socialists to have recognized the
fundamental importance of the problem. He had followed the
moves of the Great Powers in this field with interest, and had
repeatedly accused the party of overlooking the importance of
colonial expansion, thus giving the Government a dangerous
freedom of action. On these foundations, he now resumed the
construction of his theories. He intended to survey the situation
of the world market, and to produce, at the same time, a blueprint for a socialist foreign policy.
The study published at the end of the year 1907, and entitled
Colonial Policy and the Breakdown,4 was a pioneer analysis of
modern imperialism. In sharp contrast to the later works of
Rudolf Hilferding and Rosa Luxemburg, who concerned themselves mainly with the economic causes of colonial expansion,
Parvus was mainly interested in its political aftermath. The
hostilities that might lead to a war, rather than the capitalist
contradictions that forced the Great Powers to expand overseas,
formed the hard core of Helphand's thinking.
The connexion between the protective customs barriers and
colonialism, Helphand regarded as the most dangerous element
4
Die Kolonialpolitik und der Zusammenbruch.
105
of capitalist foreign policy. The erection of customs barriers

occasioned a movement of capital out of the home countries; at
the same time, however, the barriers were extended into colonial
territories. 'An industrial state together with a colonial empire',
was the imperialist entity which resulted from this process.5
Nevertheless, Helphand did not regard imperialismin
contrast to the opinions of many of the later explorers of this
territory, Lenin and Radek among themas the inevitable consequence of the capitalist economic order. He looked on protectionism as a freely chosen restriction, a 'premium for retreat',
an adequate illustration of the political blindness of the middle
class. It was, Helphand thought, to everybody's disadvantage
that the unity of the world market was in the process of being
disrupted by the rival colonial empires. And this was, for
Helphand, the high road to an international cataclysm: 'If trade
policy is replaced by colonial policy, this is the way to political
breakdown.'
As to Germany's position, Helphand expressed his concern
with the fact that, in the course of expansion in Africa and Asia,
the Berlin Government was bound to encounter the hostility of
Britain and Japan. In such a situation, an alliance with Russia
was the only way out for Germany. And against the 'Russian
orientation' Helphand trained his heaviest guns. Tsarist Russia,
6'
the cornerstone of monarchist violence for the whole of Europe',
would not be able to resist internal political pressures; it would
collapse in the near future. If it came to an imperialist conflict,
Germany would be fatally isolated. Helphand added, with prophetic foresight, that Britain would then become Germany's most
dangerous enemy.
Helphand offered an antidote to this catastrophic development,
a development which would benefit neither capitalism nor
socialism. He advocated free trade, which would keep the world
market open for everybody. The Social Democrat party should
conduct, he suggested, its future agitation under the slogans of
'Democracy, the unification of Europe, free trade'.6 The programme would make it possible for the party to take the initiative
in the field of foreign policy.
5
ibid., p. 97.
6 ibid., p. 30.
106
In these conclusions, Helphand returned to his old tasks. He

saw himself as the grand strategist, destined to make the German
socialists take up the offensive. But neither encouragement nor
arguments could change the customary attitudes of the party
leaders. They had built their entrenchment, and no power on
earth could move them to advance into the open battlefield. Once
again he was reduced to the rank of an outsider, of a theorist
without influence; he was sharply reminded that his absence from
Germany had earned him no promotion in the party chain of
command. A more reasonable man would not have been surprised.
For the time being, Helphand was immune to disappointments. External circumstances were favourable and they helped
to preserve his internal balance. And on his Italian holiday he
met Rosa Luxemburg, who also came to recuperate on the shores
of the Lago di Guarda. The reunion with Rosa was important
for him at this point: a lot had changed since their last meeting,
at the prison in St. Petersburg. After the intense companionship
of the revolution, they were both suffering from its aftermath,
from isolation and a feeling of loneliness. They both knew
what they could expect in Germany. They had had enough
experience of the party machinery, and yet they were both
resolved to carry on the fight, as before. Although they were both
intensely political people, and politics was their primary concern,
underneath this, they faced similar personal problems.
Helphand had left his second wife and their son behind in
Russia. The friendship with the temperamental, sarcastic, but
infinitely feminine Rosa made it possible for him to forget the
past quite easily. For her own part, she was glad to have found
some support, a compassionate understanding, in Helphand.
Soon after the Warsaw revolution, she had parted company with
her friend, Leo Yogiches. She now seemed to prefer a looser
relationship with Helphand than she had had with Yogiches; she
regarded Helphand's company as a pleasant distraction which
eased her over the spiritual crises of the past months.
They were both very discreet about their friendship. It was
their personal secret, a conspiracy between them which they
treated with the utmost tact. They were not romantic lovers, but
they shared an understanding and could rely on each other.
Strategist without an Army 107
When Helphand returned to Germany early in the summer,

he found out, with satisfaction, that the role he had played in
Russia had brought him quite a lot of popularity. He was a
man who had taken a personal part in a revolution. Mass strikes,
army mutinies, street fightingall the things the German
socialists knew from romantic songshe had seen, taken part in,
directed. It was safer to raise a man who had taken part in a
revolution to the rank of hero, and to celebrate him in this role,
than to accept his views, or give him political support. Helphand
did not see the snag in the enthusiasm of his German comrades.
He was genuinely pleased, especially since he derived certain
benefits from the situation. The party could come to his aid and
it did so, swiftly and magnanimously; his enthusiasm for it was
now about to be rewarded. The old quarrels and disappointments were forgotten, and Helphand was welcomed back into the
centre of German journalism. Karl Kautsky asked for contributions by Helphand for the Neue Zeit, for the first time since 1902;
even Vorwrts, a newspaper with which he had conducted a
bloody feud since the middle of the eighteen-nineties, reopened
its columns to Helphand. The past was forgotten, at any rate for
the time being.
Helphand used the opportunities offered to the full; he allowed
no editor to run short of his contributions. He also revived his
news-sheet Aus der Weltpolitik, which had ceased to appear at the
end of 1905. The book of reminiscences of the Russian revolution was his greatest success. It appeared in the summer of 1907
in Dresden, under the title In the Russian Bastille during the
Revolution.7 Its contents matched the title: the political events
in Russia in 1905 were pushed aside, to provide the background
for the adventurous life of the hero, Alexander Helphand. The
author knew his German comrades and their tastes: a large
majority of them had found out about life inside a prison from
Casanova's memoirs, rather than from their own experience.
Helphand spared no effect to press home the awfulness of his
own imprisonment; the narrative culminated in his flight from
Siberia.
The book scored on two counts, and they were both finely
In der russischen Bastille whrend der Revolution.
108
calculated by the author: it sold extremely well, and it left its

mark on the socialist agitation in Germany against the Tsarist
regime. In this last regard, Helphand could well be satisfied
with his achievements. He may have found it impossible to influence the course of the domestic policy of the party; he may
have found it difficult to arouse a wider interest, among his
comrades in Germany, in foreign policy. But he contributed
hugely to the formation and the acceptance, by the socialist
movement, of a particular image of Tsarist Russia. This Russia
was the bulwark of monarchist reaction, beyond redemption,
quite incapable of reform. A revolution was the only way out,
and the Social Democrats the only people who could achieve it.
And on a more practical level, Helphand had introduced the
Russian party leaders to their German comrades. All this did not
seem very important at the time, but later, during the First World
War, it became so.
When Trotsky returned from London, from the Russian party
congress in the summer of 1907, he found his friend in an optimistic mood. They were very glad to see each other again
Trotsky also had escaped from Siberiaand they decided to
spend their holidays together. But first of all, Helphand took
care of the German edition of Trotsky's memoirs of the revolution: like Helphand's own reminiscences, they were published
by Kaden's house in Dresden. Together with Trotsky's wife,
Natalia Sedova, they went from Dresden to the Saxon mountains
and then crossed the frontier into neighbouring Bohemia, where
they stayed at a small village favoured by junior Austro-Hungarian civil servants as their summer residence. It was a very
pleasant holiday, but one person was still missing. Helphand
sent Rosa Luxemburg a most pressing invitation to join the
three of them in Bohemia. But his cautious friend preferred to
stay in Berlin.
Early in the autumn, Helphand and Trotsky returned to
Germany; Sedova had in the meantime left for Russia, to collect
her son. Helphand took it upon himself to acquaint his friend
with the German socialist movement. He introduced Trotsky to
Karl Kautsky; to Lenin's intense displeasure, Trotsky became
a correspondent of the Neue Zeit and of Vorwrts. Trotsky was
109
glad of the goodwill of the German comrades: he was, however,

unable to settle in Berlin. The atmosphere inside the party was
too petit bourgeois, too inbred for him. He respected Kautsky as
an authority on Marxism, but he was bored by the dryness of the
German theorist's book learning. They were small things that
irritated Trotsky; they added up, however, to an unpleasant
picture of the German party.
It was Maxim Gorki who recorded the kind of impression the
German party made, in 1907, on a visitor from Russia; the following extract is an account of his own visit to Berlin that year:
My dejection began in Berlin where I met almost all the leading Social
Democrats, and dined with August Bebel, with Singer, a very stout fellow, beside me, and other distinguished people around. We dined in a
spacious and comfortable room. Tasteful embroidered cloths were
thrown over the canary cage and embroidered antimacassars were
fastened on the backs of the armchairs so that the covers should not get
soiled from the heads of the persons sitting in them. Everything was
solid and substantial. Everyone ate in a solemn manner and said to each
other in a solemn tone 'Mahlzeit'. This was a new word for me, and I
knew that 'mal' in French meant bad and 'Zeit' in German meant times
'bad times'. Singer twice referred to Kautsky as 6my romanticist'.
Bebel, with his aquiline nose, seemed to me somewhat dissatisfied. We
drank Rhenish wine and beer. The wine was sour and tepid. The beer
was good. The Social Democrats spoke sourly and with condescension
about the Russian Revolution and the Party, but about their own Party
the German Partyeverything was splendid! There was a general
atmosphere of self-satisfaction. Even the chairs looked as though they
delighted in supporting the honourable bulk of the leaders.'8
Despite Helphand's exertions to show his friend the more

attractive sides of the German socialist movement, he does not
seem to have had much success. And when the police started
creating difficulties at the end of 1907 about Trotsky's residential permit, he left Berlin, without much regret, for Vienna.
During the last weeks of Trotsky's stay in Germany, the two
friends must have felt that their ways were about to part. Their
8
Gorki, Lenin, Moscow, 1931, p. 6.
110
reunion after the revolution lacked the warmth of their relationship in the Munich days; Trotsky was now more independent
and more mature. Although he still held Parvus in high esteem,
he was now convinced that their ideas were developing in
different directions.
The differences between the two friends were occasioned by a
theory, which was to become famous, developed by Trotsky:
the theory of permanent revolution. He had first drafted it in his
cell in the Saints Peter and Paul Fortress, while Helphand was
busy with the popular account of his experiences in Russia. The
foundations of the theory were borrowed, almost in their entirety,
from Helphand. In an essay entitled 'Prospects and Perspectives',9 Trotsky first recapitulated Helphand's most important
findings: the sociological and political reasons for the impotence
of the Russian middle class, the leading role of the proletariat,
the conception of the global unity of the world market, as well as
his belief in the avant-garde mission of the Russian proletariat in
the world revolution.
From these premisses, Helphand had developed his concept of
the 'workers' democracy', which was to be, as we have already
seen, a modified phase of capitalist development. In Helphand's
view, the revolution could on no account introduce socialism to
Russia. This could occur only when the country reached a high
degree of industrial development, and the working class formed
the majority of the population.
From the same premisses, Trotsky now drew completely
different conclusions from those of Helphand. He argued that the
proletariat, after achieving provisional power in the state, would
have to transcend, under the internal pressure of the revolution, the frontiers of the middle-class as well as of the workers'
democracy, and proceed to make deep inroads into the capitalist
order of property. The revolution could not be confined within
artificial frontiers: it could only be extended. The co-operation
between the Russian and the western European proletariat should
make it possible for the Russian workers not only to assert their
power, but to take the first steps into socialism: 'Without the
direct political help of the European proletariat, the working
9
'Itogy i perspektivy', in Nasha revolyutsiya, St. Petersburg, 1906, pp. 224-86.
111
class in Russia would not be in a position to retain power in its

hands, and to transform its temporary domination into a lasting
socialist dictatorship.'10
Helphand could not agree with this view of the revolution. It
was not that he lacked the courage and the perception to draw
radical conclusion from the premisses he himself had laid down.
Instead, his unwillingness to go along with Trotsky may be
regarded as an indication of his doubts as to the spontaneous
revolutionary potential of the proletariat in western Europe. He
thought that Trotsky relied too much on foreign aid: Helphand
knew better what could be expected from the German party. At
the same time, in contrast to Trotsky, who concerned himself
largely with revolutionary action, Helphand had made a thorough
examination of the technical and economic conditions that were
necessary for the successful introduction of socialist economy.
Socialism meant for him the transformationand not the constructionof an industrial society. He had himself stressed the
international implications of capitalism. But his concept of a
party capable of the construction of socialism had nothing in
common with the Russian view of a party of revolutionary elite.
For the purposes of the organization of the future, Helphand
thought the German type of movement the most suitable: a
disciplined and tightly organized mass party, together with its
auxiliary troops, the trade unions and the co-operatives. He was
not convinced that the backwardness of Russia would prove a
political advantage.
Their differences as to the theory of permanent revolution
marked the end of the intellectual partnership between Helphand and Trotsky. At first they took great care to paper over
the cracks: they were still treading the lonely path between
the two Russian party factions, and they had no interest in airing
their differences in public. When Trotsky left for Vienna at
the end of the year the quarrel was set aside, but by no means
forgotten. It was finally concluded a decade later, in circumstances which the parting friends could hardly have imagined in
1907.
The benevolent reception by his German comrades helped
10
ibid., p. 278.
112 The Merchant of Revolution
Parvus to find his bearings. It resolved his doubts as to his proper

place in European socialism. There was no point in his following
Trotsky back into the Russian organization: once again, he had
had enough of his mother country and of his former compatriots.
And the wheel of history had somehow got stuck in Russia: in
the West, the historical process would continue to unfold. Again,
a profound aversion to migr circles came upon Helphand.
Contemptuously, in measured terms, he declined several offers
to take part in Russian exile journalism. It was again operating
in a vacuum; the exiles did not have to respond to the demands
of a mass movement, and Helphand was convinced that they
would relapse into a state of chaotic disunity. He accused the
Menshevik editors of their new Golos Sotsialdemokrata of
jettisoning the principles of class struggle in order to secure
circulation in Russia herself. He therefore could make no
contributions to their organ: he would be content with the
'role of an observer', who would work mainly for the German
party.11
This was precisely what Helphand intended to do, and he
resolutely stuck to his decision. It did not mean that he had
chosen the simplest and most comfortable way out. The delight
of the first months after his return from Russia was an exception,
an oasis in the wilderness that lay before and after him. It would
not take long for him to be reduced to his old status. And Germany was, at the time, no paradise for socialist migrs. The
necessity to remain on good terms with the Tsarist Government
occasioned a tougher attitude, on the part of Berlin, towards the
exiled revolutionaries.
Two of them had been extradited to the Russian authorities
shortly before Helphand's arrival in Dortmund; when the socialist deputies protested in the Reichstag, the Chancellor's reply
amounted to a declaration of war on the Russian 'extortionists
and conspirators'. Prince von Blow was convinced that they
represented an unbearable burden for Germany's foreign policy.
This warning was doubtless sufficient for Helphand. Arrest in
one of the states from which he had been banned would have
meant extradition, and another trip to Siberia. Nevertheless, he
11
Parvus to Martov, February 1908, in Sotsial-demokraticheskoe dvizhenie.
113
stayed on in Germany. He knew enough about the habits of the

police, and was able to keep out of their way.
In the years between 1908 and 1910, he led an unsettled,
wandering life in Germany. For a short time, he worked on the
Chemnitzer Volkstimme, illegal visits to Prussia and Saxony
alternated with more peaceful weeks in Stuttgart or Munich. He
earned his living by running the feature-agency, and by contributions to the socialist press. Despite the way he lived, it was a
very productive period of his life. After many years of employment as a journalist, when he had had to mould his ideas into the
form of articles and, at best, of short pamphlets, he now decided
to write a longer study, perhaps his magnum opus. The time had
come, Helphand thought, to draw up a preliminary balance-sheet.
It took him two years to complete his work. In the summer of
1910, he sent his publisher the manuscripts of two books, which
were published, in the following months, under the titles The
State, Industry, and Socialism,12 and The Class Struggle of the
Proletariat.13 Parts of both these studies had appeared, in the
course of the year 1909, as separate pamphlets; it was impossible,
however, to form a judgement of Helphand's first comprehensive
account of his theoretical work until the publication of the two
books. They were his last original contribution to the ideology of
socialism.
A retrospective glance at the history of the German workers'
movement served Helphand as an excuse for a brief examination
of his own contribution to the party controversies. In a short
chapter, he stated his own views on the following problems:
political mass strike, trade unions, revisionism, economic crisis,
the world market, protective tariffs, and colonialism. Helphand
was able to say that the party had, though painfully and in the
midst of internal convulsions, considerably increased its theoretical arsenal. And then an appraisal of the relative positions of
power of the two sides engaged in the contest revealed the
following picture.
The capitalist economic order, protected by a powerful army
and controlled by monopolies and cartels, was, without an
12
13
Der Staat, die Industrie und der Sozialismus, Dresden, 1910.

Der Klassenkampf des Proletariats, Berlin, 1911.
114
impulse from the outside, far from breaking down. The 'breakdown' theory beloved of so many socialists, Helphand dismissed
as erroneous without much ado. There was still life in capitalism,
though not life eternal. He had a low view of the value of the
occasional economic crisis: the greatest danger to the capitalist
system was armed conflict between the imperialist states. A war
could be occasioned by competition on the world market, and by
the resulting imperialist power politics. A two-front engagement
would thus be forced on the stateagainst the external imperialist
enemy on the one hand, and, on the other, against the internal
class enemy. This situation, in Helphand's view, would bring
about the final breakdown: in the future, war and revolution
would be indivisible. 'The war sharpens all capitalist contradictions. A world war may therefore be concluded only by a world
revolution.'14
Helphand did not believe in the inevitability of the internal
breakdown of capitalism, nor in the automatic victory of Social
Democracy. He abhorred equally both these complementary
ideas. The writing on the wall indicated that it was not the
bourgeoisie, entrenched behind the power of the state, but the
proletariat, that had reached the limit of its possibilities. Economic concentration had provided a counterbalance to the might of
the trade unions; the parliamentary influence of the party had
been cancelled out by the decline in the powers of the parliament.
In Helphand's view, the proletariat had to develop new revolutionary tactics. He was convinced that these new tactics would
have to make use of what he described as 'combined weapons'.15
The nineteenth century had been a period of isolated battles:
the proletariat had developed and proved the various weapons at
its disposal. In this century, however, a grand revolutionary
strategy was needed, which would bring all the component parts
of the class struggle into concerted and effective action. 'There
are no specific means of revolutionary struggle. The revolution
uses all the available political means of struggle . . . since the
revolution is not a method of fighting, but a historical process.'16
In the demand for the strategic integration of all the available
14
16
15
Klassenkampf des Proletariats, p. 147.
ibid., p. 109.
'Die russische Revolution', in Leipziger Volkszeitung, 13 November 1908.
115
means of struggle, Helphand gave a timely hint to his comrades.

This piece of homespun advice has been absorbed into the very
texture of the revolutionary method of the communist parties. In
this regard, there are no differences between Moscow and Peking.
But how should these weapons be used? Here, Helphand
touched the most sensitive nerve of German socialism. During
the year 1908, among the party leaders there raged an embittered
controversy. The problem was whether the time was ripe to lead
the proletariat into the streets and, by the employment of the
mass strike, to force reaction into retreat. The suggestions offered,
led to a three-way split in the party. The moderate group simply
warned the socialists off any kind of political adventure. The left
wing, on the other hand, represented by Rosa Luxemburg and
Karl Liebknecht, the son of the late socialist leader, pressed for
revolutionary action. The workers, so their argument ran, were
ready for the decisive fight, and it was high time to join it. Rosa
Luxemburg especially, frightened her German comrades: after
one of her speeches to the party congress, August Bebel was so
impressed by her vision of the revolution that he already believed
himself to be wading, up to his ankles, through blood. And she
addressed Kautsky, with whom she was now continually falling
out, after many years of close friendship: 'We do not need you,
comrade Kautsky, at the brakes.'
The decisive influence belonged, however, to a third group
centred around Bebel and Kautsky: their intermediate position
was acceptable to the majority on the party executive. Kautsky
pointed out, on many occasions, that the party leadership was
ready for an offensive; the proletariat, however, was not strong
enough for the final engagement. The solution therefore followed : 'Neither revolution nor legality at any price.'
This was the situation inside the party when Helphand was
working out the new strategy. It was self-evident that he should
have found nothing to his liking in the attitude of the moderate
group. But he also viewed all the other suggestions with suspicion. He thought of Rosa Luxemburg's policy as an attempt at
a blind crash-through, a mere Revolutionismus. It was dangerous,
he thought, to whip up the passion of the masses and then to
direct all the released energy at one single point. He put it this
116
way in a letter to Kautsky: 'The revolution will become the mass

strike, the mass strike a demonstration strike, and the struggle for
political power will be reduced to the struggle for the Prussian
suffrage.'17
This contraction of the target was, in Helphand's view, a very
grave error. Rosa Luxemburg knew of one aim only, and she was
unconcerned with the political and economic background. Instead
of starting with the highest demand, Helphand proposed, the
aims should be set in such a manner that their achievement would
naturally lead to the intensification of the revolutionary struggle.
Nevertheless, Helphand was disinclined to deliver ammunition to Rosa Luxemburg's opponents. She wanted the right thing
the wrong way; Kautsky, on the other hand, was wrong all along
the line. He was in fact making a plea for peace and moderation;
he feared the defeat of the socialist movement in some kind of
cataclysmic engagement. In Helphand's view, Kautsky's policy
would have led, in practice, to utter stagnation. Kautsky taxed his
mind beyond endurance, calculating the advent of the time of
reckoning: he was afraid that it might be wrongly chosen, and
that the choice might 'corrupt' the whole course of history.18
At this point, Helphand had cleared the ground sufficiently to
advance his own propositions. The revolution, he said again and
again, could not be confined in time in the same way as, for instance, a battle. It had to be seen as a dialectical process, as a long
chain of victories and failures. The two alternativesan immediate victory or a catastrophic defeatwere nothing but a
negation of political realities. There was, according to Helphand,
an analogy of the revolutionary process in the cycle of economic
crises. Peaceful development would be disrupted by social
explosions; the revolutionary period would then 'undergo its
own development, and appear as a historical process and not as
one single action'.19 The revolutionary period demanded an offensive strategy. Helphand recommended a dynamic, dialectic
method of combat, planned deployment of all the available arms,
and steadfastness in face of defeat.
Against the background of contemporary socialist thinking
17
18
Helphand to Karl Kautsky, 14 June 1910, in the Kautsky-Archiv.

19
ibid., p. 137.
117
his views were highly personal and distinct. Most of the party
theorists were so constrained by a narrow approach to Marxism
that they failed to understand Helphand's breadth of vision. He
was neither a radical nor a revisionist, and yet he had points of
contact on both sides. He was a complicated, but logical theorist
of revolutionary action, who integrated the various trends current
in the party in one plan. He was a 'Parvusist': the only one.
He worked hard to push forward the advance positions of
ideological development. He went so far that most of his contemporaries came to regard him as a dreamer irretrievably lost in
fantasy. It was said that his mother had died in a state of mental
derangement: hence his revolutionary day-dreams. In order to
protect themselves against his visions, the European socialists
chose to regard him as a lunatic. He had shocked his Russian
comrades by the idea of a provisional workers' government in
January 1905; this was the first step towards a Utopia. Five years
later, when he completed the two studies, the German socialists
returned the same verdict. It was especially the publication of
The State, Industry, and Socialism which occasioned concern for
Helphand's sanity. There was really no cause for alarm.
His interest in trade cycles, monopolies, and trade unions,
convinced Helphand that examination of the past and the present
no longer sufficed. Capitalism had been analysed frequently and
in detail; the workers had learned what kind of weapons stood at
their disposal, and how they should attack the established order.
But nothing had been said about the tasks of the future, about
those political and economic problems the Social Democrats
would face on the day after the revolution. What was socialism
in practice? Where and how did one begin to build it up? How
would the system function?
Here, Parvus found himself in uncharted territory. Marx and
Engels had indicated the shape of the future socialist society only
vaguely, and the German party ideologists were very reserved in
this respect. Indeed, anyone rash enough to concern himself with
the future state ran the risk of incurring ridicule and the charge
of indulging in Utopian and unscientific fancies. Until 1910, the
German socialist writers had confined themselves to producing
apologies concerning this society, without suggesting a concrete
M.R.-I
118
picture of its structure. Their belief in the inevitability of

historical development allowed them to disregard problems
which, they were certain, would be automatically solved in the
coming years.
When, at the Hanover party congress in 1899, Bernstein
pointed to the difficulties the party would face after the revolution, Bebel described Bernstein's attitude as a 'fear of victory',
and he added that, by introducing artificial difficulties, Bernstein
was destroying faith in the possibility of victory. Behind BebePs
forceful pronouncement, there was a good deal of mental confusion. Bebel had had enough of the party intellectuals, who were
creating problems that he himself, a practical politician and an
experienced parliamentarian, could afford to disregard. He asked
his comrades in Hanover: 'Do you believe that the clerks, the
technicians, the engineers and others will strike, that they will
not stick with us if we promise them better treatment and better
pay? (Laughter, applause.) I will tell you that there are many
privy councillors who will then come to us, perhaps even
Ministers.'20
Helphand, on the contrary, remained entirely unmoved by
dreams of governments which would include venerable privy
councillors and Ministers willing to serve whoever was in control.
He insisted that the socialists would have to be less silly than
Bebel, and more precise. After all, the conception of the socialist
state of the future was, in his view, 'the most important theoretical problem of the living generation'.21
Despite the general attitude of the party, Helphand developed
the following programme for the socialist transformation of the
economy. He regarded the nationalization of the banks as the
starting-point. If the socialist Government controlled the money
and capital market, it would be in a position to direct the whole
economy: the banks themselves had created the necessary basis
for this change. In this connexion, Helphand quoted Walter
Rathenau, who had once spoken of 300 men who controlled the
'economic fortunes of the continent'. Such a concentration of
control, Helphand regarded as a symptom of the ripeness of
European economy for a social revolution, and also as the main
20
Protokoll Hannover, 1899, p. 127.
21
Strategist without an Army 119

venue of attack. There was, in his view, no need for an immediate
abolition of private ownership of the means of production. The
construction of socialism had also to be a gradual organic process,
and the nationalization of the banks would give it the initial
momentum. The socialist state would then be in a position of
power, enabling it to push the private economic sector farther
and farther back.22
Helphand's blue-print for the future was of course greatly
oversimplified and there was a good deal of romantic zest in his
programme. He ignored the problems of all-embracing planning
by the state, and he failed to envisage the massive unwieldiness
of the bureaucracy which would be needed to carry out his plan.
Nevertheless, at the time he was writing, there existed neither
interest, nor practical experience of these problems. And Helphand did not return from his explorations with a completely
idyllic tale of the promised land. In fact, he encountered a
number of difficulties. The nationalization of the means of production, it occurred to him, would change 'only the form of
capitalist domination'. It would provide the state with more
power than it had ever possessed before, and although the state
would now be the instrument of the proletariatthe majority of
the populationit still ran the danger of being misused. The
plenitude of economic power in its hands was dangerous, unless
certain controls were introduced.
At this point Helphand discovered the final argument in
support of his old thesis that the proletarian organizations were
not an end in themselves. They were necessary for the achievement of power: they would, however, be essential for the realization of a socialist order. Only they could be entrusted with the
task of the protection of the individual; they alone were in a
position, and this was true especially of the trade unions, to
maintain balance in regard to the strengthened machinery of the
state. Socialism, therefore, did not mean only the, transformation
of capitalism: it meant also the further development of the
workers' organizations.
Helphand touched here on a crucial point in the theory and
practice of socialist development. We, in fact, have the example
22
Der Staat, die Industrie und der Sozialismus, passim.
120
of the Soviet State before us, where the first steps into dictatorship were the dissolution of the opposition parties and the
neutralization of the power of the trade unions. In addition, the
concentration of economic power in the hands of the state had an
adverse effect on the rights of the individual. Nevertheless,
Helphand's suggestions as to the checks and balances that should
operate within a socialist state cannot be regarded simply as an
early warning against a Bolshevik dictatorship. In 1910, the
socialists were still incapable of imagining a situation in which the
party might use its power, acquired through a revolution, against
the majority of the nation. However, the fact that Helphand, as
early as 1910, pointed at the dangers inherent in an all-powerful
socialist state, certainly deserves special mention. His study
anticipated a possibility which eluded the imaginative grasp of
men steeped in the traditions of democratic socialism, a possibility which was translated into hard political terms in Russia in
1917.
Helphand's German comrades received his message as if it
came from another world. The Neue Zeit critic was even incapable
of noticing that Helphand had written of a socialist state. He
took it that the author of The State, Industry, and Socialism was
merely advising the current Imperial Government to nationalize
the banks. Rosa Luxemburg did better than anyone else. 'The fat
one has written a beautiful book', she wrote to a friend of hers,
'but I believe that he is slowly going mad.'
Although Rosa Luxemburg knew a lot about the circumstances
of Helphand's life, she was, on this occasion, neither perceptive
nor charitable. The act of writing was Helphand's one firm link
with the world of sanity; in every other regard, the difficulties he
now faced would have broken a weaker man. He saw his predicament clearly enough.
He may well have felt that he had written the two recent books
in vain. Nobody understood them, and nobody took them
seriously. He had wasted two years, and he had received 2,000
marks for the two manuscripts. And by the time he wrote the last
sentence, the whole miserable sum had been spent. The ideas he
tried to put across, he knew, were too complicated, too intellectual, and quite unsuitable for mass agitation. The leaders of the
121
party were sometimes puzzled, more often hostile to what

Helphand had to offer. He had completely failed in his attempt
to keep the revolutionary consciousness of the party alive.
A group of dedicated followers might have lent some weight
to his policies. But he had always been rather careless about
rallying reliable support around himself; he possessed a monumental disinterest, amounting to arrogance, in the practical details
of organization. He could call Konrad Haenisch his friend and
devoted admirer; Rosa Luxemburg could be protective and
considerate towards him, but only at the cost of coming to regard
him as an utterly helpless person. Otherwise, Helphand had
succeeded in antagonizing most of his prominent comrades. From
Bernstein to Bebel they had all, at one time or another, been
given the sharp side of his tongue. And then the Schnlank and
the Marchlewski incidents were remembered, and held against
him. There were too many features in his conduct and his thinking that alienated him from his German comrades, and condemned him to political isolation, even to personal loneliness. He
came to be looked upon as a natural catastrophe, both unexpected
and devastating.
It was therefore not surprising that the German socialists kept
their distance, and that they should try to circumscribe his
influence. During the nineteen years he had spent in Germany
though with occasional breakshe was never entrusted with an
official party job. He never attended, as a delegate with a right to
vote, one of its annual conferences. As an alien, a Reichstag
mandate was for him out of the question. Only a few newspapers
and periodicals remained, in which he could give vent to his
anger. The German party did not, as he had hoped as a young
man, become his fatherland.
He did not know where to turn. He had learned, during the
1905 revolution in Russia, that he was incapable of directing
political action: he had completely failed as a leader of men. He
realized, after the failure of the revolution, that he was out of
touch with Russian conditions; he had shown no interest in
securing a place for himself in the Russian party. And now, at last,
he came to believe that despite his considerable talents as a writer
the written word would secure for him no power, no influence.
122
He was well known, but without power; he was ambitious and

talented, but, apart from his writing, unable to show positive
proof of his quality. He would have to take some drastic steps to
break out of the impasse; and he did not yet know in which
direction. Then suddenly he was made to act, and to act quickly.
Since December 1905, the storm-clouds had been gathering
above him, and he tried hard to take no notice. The Bolsheviks,
under Lenin's leadership, were then fighting against heavy odds
in Moscow, and, like the Soviet in St. Petersburg, they ran into
financial difficulties. Their large printing plant was proving
especially expensive. It was to be expected that they should now
remember that Helphand owed them royalties for Gorki's play,
and they did.
I. P. Ladyzhnikov, a close friend of Gorki, was then in Berlin:
under the instructions of the Bolshevik central committee, he was
trying to set up a publishing house there which would specialize
in Marxist literature, as well as in the works of the 'progressive'
authors, and in particular those of Russia's first proletarian
writer. The profits made by the enterprise were intended to
augment the Bolshevik party funds.23 First of all, however,
Ladyzhnikov had to acquire the rights that Gorki had transferred to Helphand in 1902. Sometime late in December 1905,
Ladyzhnikov wrote to his friend: 'I have already given my
agreement to a court of arbitration. I had consulted Nikitich and
Ilich [Lenin], and they should have told you about it. Of course
we do not have to inform everybody about this case, so that we
should not deal any trump cards into the hands of the bourgeoisie.
Either I or Ilich should have seen Parvus about itbut so far,
there has been no time. We wanted to demand from him the
immediate transfer to us of all the rights, from which he is still
making a good profit. . . .' 24
The Bolsheviks estimated that Helphand had embezzled some
130,000 marks, which rightfully belonged to them.25 They by no
means had an open-and-shut case against him. The original
agreement with Gorki had been made in 1902, a year before the
Bolshevik-Menshevik split: the Social Democrat party as a
23
24
Arkhiv Gorkovo, Moscow, 1959, vol. 7, p. 292.

25
ibid., pp. 131-2.
ibid., p. 294.
123
whole was supposed to benefit by it, not any one of its factions.
Their estimate of the profits made by the play was overoptimistic:
it would have had to earn some 180,000 marks, a very large
amount by the standards of German theatre productions at the
time. In any case, the legal owner of the rights was the publishing
house in Munich, which, apart from Gorki's play, had done very
badly. When Ladyzhnikov wrote to Gorki, it was on the point of
being liquidated; Ladyzhnikov made no reference to his negotiations, if any, with Marchlewski.
Be it as it may, the affair blew up into a big socialist scandal.
Rumours started to circulate, especially after Gorki's visit to
Germany in 1907. He then lodged a complaint against Helphand's conduct with the party executive. Helphand had embezzled this large sum, and, in reply to a letter to Helphand,
Gorki maintained, he had received the 'bland' explanation that
the money had been used for a number of trips to Italy. The
furious poet advised the German party executive that Helphand,
the publisher, should 'have his ears cut off'.
Helphand defended himself as best he could. He said again
and again that Marchlewski had arrived, during the liquidation of
the publishing house, at a settlement with Gorki. The whole
affair, he said, was libellous nonsense. And when it was resuscitated during the First World War, for the purposes of character
assassination, Helphand let it be known that he was quite ready
for another consultation, and even for the eventual settlement of
any outstanding debts. Gorki himself then said that certain
publicistsmen like Burtsev and Alexinskihad distorted the
facts of the affair, and he added: 'Nevertheless, I regard it as
neither necessary nor possible to complete and to straighten out
the reports.'26 The story did not end here. Some years after the
war Gorki returned to it, and to his old assault on Helphand. He
did so in a rather extraordinary place: in an obituary for his
recently deceased comrade, Ilich Lenin.
Nevertheless, in the years after the first Russian revolution,
Gorki's perseverance did Helphand a great deal of harm. And
what he had to say in his own defence did not sound entirely
convincing. As great an admirer of Helphand as Haenisch, wrote
26
Birshevye Viedomosti, 20 October 1915.
124
in his reminiscences that, as far as matters of finance were

concerned, he always behaved on 'a very grand scale indeed'.
And when Helphand started to deal, during the war, in terms of
millions, he often told his friend that 'his head was his main book
ofaccounts'.
Negligence in keeping of accounts was a poor excuse in an
affair in which Gorki, Lenin, and the Bolshevik party funds were
involved. Financial carelessness was a hangman's noose, and
Helphand himself had put his head into it. He left himself
wide open, and in a matter about which his German comrades
would tolerate no joke. Dishonesty and transgressions against
private property were, in their eyes, much graver offences than,
say, political stupidity. The complaint Gorki had lodged with
the party executive in Berlin delivered Helphand into the hands
of party justice. A commission of inquiry, consisting of Bebel,
Kautsky, and Zetkin studied, in the years 1908 and 1909, this
extremely complex case. The proceedings were surrounded with
the utmost secrecy: the rank and file of the party knew nothing
about them. The verdict was never made public.
Helphand had a bad case, and the findings of the commission
went against him. The German socialist leaders were innocent of
scandals on Russian party lines, and they did not know how
to deal with them. Rumours soon started to circulate that Helphand had been warned, and that he had been told not to apply,
for the time being, for editorial posts on any of the German
socialist newspapers.
Although truth and fiction became interchangeable in the
course of the Gorki affair, it had the most unpleasant personal
repercussions for Helphand. He was enmeshed in a situation
from which there was no obvious way out. One thing must,
however, have been clear to him: further stay in Germany would
have broken him once and for all. His demoralization was now
complete, and he went through a deep spiritual crisis. He wanted
to be able to regard the hopelessly bleak situation with some
detachment, and he decided to leave Germany for the time being.
In the summer of 1910, he moved to Vienna. He thought the
trip would give him a change of climate: it became a turningpoint in his life.
6
An Interlude in Constantinople
Late in the summer of that fateful year, 1910, Helphand
certainly needed a change. The Habsburg capital was well suited
to provide it. Its leisurely pace, its tolerant, easygoing ways eased
him over the personal crisis of the past months. The Austrian
socialists were unlikely to be much concerned or informed about
the recent party inquiry in Germany. Trotsky was still living in
Vienna, but from him Helphand had no secrets.
From Vienna, Helphand might be able to start afresh; he
could console himself with the thought that the years he had
spent in the socialist movement had not been, after all, entirely
wasted. He had played a distinguished part in all the most explosive socialist controversies in Germany, as well as in the first
revolution in Russia. He had learned a lot, about himself and
about politics, and he was unlikely ever again to make the same
mistakes, or to lay himself open as much as he had done. And
most important, he had developed a sensitive, seismographic
reaction to politics. He possessed a very keen eye for the irregularities, the eruptions which punctuated the broad movements of
European history.
For the time being, the political life of neither Germany nor
Russia offered any prospects of excitement. Having discarded
every vestige of revolutionary zeal, the German movement had
stagnated; in Russia, the revolution had suffered defeat only too
easily. Helphand was an impatient and ambitious man, for himself
and for socialism: he now felt that neither he himself, nor, for that
matter, the cause of revolutionary socialism had made any great
advance.
Looked at from Vienna, however, the situation south-east of
the Habsburg capital appeared more promising. The decline in
the influence of the Sublime Porte in the Balkans, the revolutionary
126
developments inside the country itself, the subjection of

Turkey to the system of the Great Powers' Capitulations: here
were the components of high-grade political dynamite. Some
time after his arrival in Vienna, Helphand wrote to his friend,
Rosa Luxemburg, that he was leaving for a three-month visit to
Constantinople. He in fact stayed in Turkey for nearly five years.
Helphand now made the final preparations for his trip to the
Near East. He knew that his articles from Turkey would be
acceptable to a number of newspaper editors in Germany and
Austria; Trotsky arranged for his contributions to appear in the
popular Russian liberal newspaper, the Kievskaya Mysl. His
forwarding address in Constantinople was c/o Albrecht Dvorak,
Poste Autrichienne: a Czech name and an Austro-Hungarian
address.
Helphand reached Constantinople early in November 1910.
His socialist past gave his life, from the first, a certain continuity.
Workers' parties were then growing up in the former Turkish
territories on the Balkans; the name of Parvus was familiar to
many of the Serbian, Rumanian, and Bulgarian socialists, and the
Turkish capital still provided them with a convenient meetingplace. The part that Trotsky had once played in Helphand's life
was now taken over by Christo Rakovsky.
The son of a wealthy Bulgarian landed family in Dobrudja,
Rakovsky became a Rumanian partly by choice, and partly by
accident, due to the shifting frontiers in this part of Europe.
He had studied medicine and law in France, and already at that
time was a socialist of some years' standing. After a long absence
he went from France to Germany, to be expelled from Prussia
in the early eighteen-nineties, soon after Helphandhe returned
to Rumania in 1905. He had now become the man who later,
after he had been executed by Stalin in the great Soviet purges,
was fondly remembered by his comrades; an ubiquitous, polyglot Marxist, a revolutionary with a taste for historical research.
Nevertheless, Rakovsky's political activities in Rumania earned
him yet another deportation order; he then spent much of his
time travelling between Vienna and Constantinople. He became a
friend of Trotsky's, and he had made the acquaintance of Rosa
Luxemburg and Helphand in Germany; now, during the early
127
part of his stay in Constantinople, Helphand met, through

Rakovsky, many of the leading Balkan socialists.
Some of them were then toyingnot entirely to the displeasure
of the Ottoman authoritieswith a variety of plans for a Balkan
federation; Helphand was especially impressed by a young Bulgarian socialist called Vlachov,1 whose activities on behalf of the
federation even succeeded in arousing the interest of the Austrian
Ambassador to Constantinople; and who, in addition, made contact with the Russian Union of Sailors. Helphand became absorbed in the investigation of the economic and political situation
in the Near East; the extremely unsettled atmosphere suited him
well and he showed no desire to return to western Europe.
For the time being, he was still suffering for his interests. A
native of the city on the Bosphorus could live quite cheaply there:
the Europeans, however, were expected to maintain European
standards, and this Helphand could not quite afford. If he lived
like a respectable European, he would have to eat like a poor
Turk, or the other way round. During the early months of his stay
in Constantinople, he got to know Scutari, the Asian part, and
the dock area near the Galata bridge, quite well. He had to rub
shoulders with the humblest inhabitants of that proud city, and
share their simplest nourishment at the cheapest of eating-places.
When he later described this time of his life to a friend of his, he
said that 'often I had to tread carefully, so that nobody could see
the holes in my shoes'.
However, it was in Constantinople that he laid down the foundations of his fortune. He had tried to make money before: the
feature-agency publishing Aus der Weltpolitik (he founded, incidentally, a similar and more successful enterprise in Turkey),
and the publishing house in Munich, were Helphand's first
commercial ventures. They both failed. The German socialist
press did not need much foreign news to keep going; the
establishment of foreign authors' copyrights in western Europe
was not as good a financial proposition as it had, at first, seemed
to Helphand. In Turkey, however, he at last found the key to the
treasure that had hitherto been denied him.
The exact details of the way in which Helphand became a rich
1
Parvus to Kautsky, 3 April 1911, Kautsky-Archiv.
128
man must remain a matter of conjecture. The wealthy Turks

themselves, the indigenous and permanent inhabitants of the
capital, were either administrators or soldiers, who held business
in contempt, and left it in the care of a heterogeneous community
which consisted largely of Armenians, Greeks, and Jews. Theirs
was a very transient society: their business deals left behind no
traces. It is possible that Helphand succeeded in attracting the
attention of European business circles, and that he became their
adviser and representative in the Ottoman Empirethe Krupp
concern and Sir Basil Zaharoff have both been mentioned in this
connexion; it is possible that he began dealing in corn and other
commodities on his own initiative. By 1912the beginning of
the Balkan warshe was doing both these things, and doing
them quite successfully.
It is also certain that he conducted his business under the
protection of the local politicians. He had established some connexions with the leaders of the rising nationalist party of the
Young Turks, and in 1912 he became the economic editor of their
newspaper, Turk Yurdu;2 he is said to have been entrusted,
during the Balkan wars, with providing supplies for the Turkish
Army. There can be no doubt that, at this time, Helphand had
closer connexions with Turkish official circles than he later cared
to admit. He travelled extensively in the Balkans and he was in a
good position to supply the Turkish Government with useful
intelligence. His political experience and financial expertise had
finally found an appreciative audience.
During the two years before the outbreak of the First World
War, Helphand acquired, for the first time, political contacts that
could be put to an eminently practical use. The man who, for
many years, had always moved on the periphery of political
powerin the German party and, even more so, in the German
Statewas now gradually approaching its very centre. He learned
that in the conditions obtaining in the Ottoman Empire, power
could be reached through money, and that money could be
acquired through political power. He was to make a good deal of
use of this knowledge.
2
cf. K. Haenisch, Parvus, p. 50, and M. Harden, 'Gold und Weihrauch', in Die
Zukunft, Berlin, 1920, pp. 2-35.
129
And then, on 28 June 1914, the shots fired by Gavrilo Princip

in Sarajevo shattered the high-summer repose of Europe. The
assassinations of the Habsburg heir apparent and his wife, were
followed by an upsurge of patriotism everywhere: first the mobilization orders, and then the declarations of war, received enthusiastic support. The inhabitants of the European capitals
welcomed the prospect of a military show-down; counsels of
moderation were drowned in the clamour of patriotic slogans.
The socialist member-parties of the Second International were
among those who attempted to avert the threatening catastrophe,
and, at the end of July, they demonstrated for peace. It was too
late.
From Constantinople, Helphand observed the crisis with
detachment. He was content to advise the Turks, in a highly
regarded article in Tasviri Efkar published a fortnight before the
outbreak of the war, that their country should derive the greatest
possible benefit from Germany's victory in the coming contest,
and he suggested that she might rid herself of the onerous capitulation treaties. Otherwise he said no more in public and did
nothing in support of the peace campaign of the Second International.
His socialist friends in Europe noticed Helphand's absence
from their ranks. Trotsky remarked testily that Helphand must
be waiting until he could 'come to St. Petersburg when everything is ready'.3 Trotsky was quite wrong. Despite the change in
his personal fortunes, Helphand had not sold out. His main
interests had not altered, nor had he laid them aside: his approach, however, had. He still regarded himself as a socialist, and
he was more than ever ready to help the socialist cause. But he
would do so in his own way, and on his own terms. He had his old
self-confidence, and he was near to achieving one of his most
cherished aims. As a man of substance, with useful political connexions, he saw himself in a position to help his comrades in their
hour of need. He was ready to make concessions to the realities of
politics, but, above all, he was ready to act.
And if he needed an explanation for his behaviour there was
one at hand. He was observing, in the last days of peace, the
3
R. Abramovich, In Tsvei Revolutsiesy New York, 1944, vol. 1, p. 374.
130
collapse of the Second International, the collapse of pre-war

socialism, for which he had tried to do so much. It had paid no
regard to him, and it had achieved little or nothing. And now the
war, which he had foreseen a long time ago, was about to break
out. It mattered little to Helphand that it had been set off in a
fortuitous manner, by a young fanatic in a small provincial town
in Bosnia. It was the war he had been waiting for, and he found
the perspectives that it opened up not at all displeasing. He
envisaged the road to socialism as leading across the ruins of
the middle-class national states, rather than through the tidy
avenues of the existing order.
In the weeks immediately before and after the outbreak of war,
Helphand plunged into feverish activity. Agitation on behalf of
the Central Powers, economic mobilization of the Ottoman
Empire, and the first subversive moves against Russia, kept him
fully occupied in Constantinople.
From Turkey, Helphand extended his agitation in Germany's
favour to Bulgaria and Rumania. The two countries were still
neutral, and both the belligerent camps desired their entry into
the war on one side or the other. Helphand made use of the local
socialist press: a few days after the outbreak of the war, the
Bucharest Zapta and the Rabotnichesky Vestnik carried the same
article by him, with the telling title Tor DemocracyAgainst
Tsarism'.4
His old habit of writing, and his skill as a journalist now stood
Helphand in good stead. The socialists were, however, divided:
a situation which had had no place in their thinking before the
warnamely, that the workers would face each other on opposite
sides of the battle-linesbecame a stark reality. The new situation forced the socialists to take an unequivocal decision, and
Helphand, too, made it. In the course of proving it acceptable, to
himself and to his comrades, he put forward some interesting
arguments. But they could no longer move in the vacuous world
of pure socialist theory: it had to be tailored to fit the hard facts
of war.
He wrote, in the Rumanian and Bulgarian socialist organs, that
there was no point whatever in discussing the question of war
4
A German translation of the article later appeared in Die Glocke, 1915, pp. 77-85.
131
guilt. The war simply carried on the economic competition of the

imperialist states by military means, and those socialists who
looked for the causes of the war in diplomatic intrigues, had
forgotten, according to Helphand, to 'think in the socialist
manner'. The war was not merely a temporary breach of an
essentially harmonious capitalist order: it should be transformed
into a vehicle of socialism.The crisis of capitalism, he pointed out,
must be exploited for the sake of a social revolution. This was the
proper task of socialist policy in the war.
The socialists could not therefore afford to stand aside during
the hostilities: but for whomand this was the crucial question,
especially in the countries not yet committed one way or the
othershould they fight? According to Helphand, the choice
before them was clear. Germany, with her powerful workers'
organization, embodied progress. Since Russian absolutism was
to be found on the other side, in the Entente camp, no further
proof was needed as to where the enemies of socialism were to be
found. He informed the Rumanian and the Bulgarian socialists
that the victory of the Entente would bring about the triumph of
Tsarism, which, in turn, would do infinite harm to the cause of
revolution in Russia, while inaugurating a 'new era of boundless
capitalist exploitation' in the whole of Europe. The workers'
parties everywhere had to unite in their struggle against Tsarism.
It was one way of looking at the war, and its appeal to some
continental socialists was not at all badly calculated. It was
inspired by Helphand's profound hatred of the Tsarist regime;
the achievement of a revolution in Russia was the aim of all
Helphand's thinking about the war. He disregarded the demands
a victorious German empire might make on Russia; he was unconcerned with the strengthening of the semi-absolutist German
State; the implied defeat of the French and English democracies
were outside his field of vision. Later in the war he would have
to make concessions and compromises, and all of them in the
direction of German chauvinism.
Helphand regarded himself neither as a chauvinist, nor as a
renegade from the socialist movement. No price was too high, as
far as he was concerned, for the destruction of Tsarism. His
132
concern for Germany's victory made him of course a bitter

opponent of any kind of revolutionary movement inside Germany,
during the hostilities. The reasons he gave were that the destruction of Tsarism would, in its turn, considerably weaken the
reactionary forces in Germany, and help to accelerate the development of socialist revolutions everywhere.
But writing for socialist newspapers could not occupy Helphand fully: there was a lot to do on the spot, in Turkey. First of
all, the Government had to be persuaded to join the war, on the
side of the Central Powers: before it could do so successfully, it
would have to undertake the mobilization of the country's economic resources. The German Ambassador to Constantinople was
of the same opinion.5 In this respect also, Helphand's services
could be of use. He was mainly concerned with the supply of
grain to the Turkish capital, and with the modernization of the
Turkish railways. By swift improvisation, he succeeded in
obtaining grain from Anatolia and Bulgaria; from Germany and
Austria, he imported railway equipment as well as spare parts for
the milling industry.6 By assisting Turkey in her economic
preparations, he made a substantial contribution to her early
entry into the war. The personal profit he made enabled him to
extend his business interests to many parts of Europe. After
Turkey, he turned his attention to Bulgaria, where he carried out
similar work.
The call-up of the Turkish Army was followed by Helphand's
first wartime experiment in subversion against the Tsarist regime.
In Vienna and in Lvov, the Ukrainiansalso known as the
Ruthenes, whose western settlements extended into the Habsburg Empirehad set up a society called the Union for the
Liberation of the Ukraine; after the outbreak of the war, it began
to agitate extensively in the press and in the camps of the Russian
prisoners of war. The Union aimed at the establishment of the
Russian Ukraine as an independent state, and it soon began to
receive protection and financial support from official quarters in
5
AA. (Auswrtiges Amt. Unpublished documents in the Archives of the German Foreign
Ministry.) Telegram No. 362 to the Foreign Ministry, 22 July 1914, in Deutschland
Nr. 128 geh.
6
cf. Parvus, 'Meine Entfernung aus der Schweiz', in Die Glocke, 1919, p. 1488; also
K. Haenisch, op. cit., p. 34.
V (a) Christo Rakovsky
sterreichische Nationalbibliothek,Vienna
Radio Times Hulton Picture Library
(b) Karl Radek, 1924
Ullstein Bilderdienst
VI. Rosa Luxemburg (left) and Helphand (centre)
133
Vienna and Berlin. The Austrian and the German Governments

were now favouring, eagerly but without much discrimination, a
variety of activities aimed at the weakening of the Tsarist
Empire. They put considerable sums at the disposal of the Union,
and then placed it under the control of the Foreign Ministry in
Vienna.7
Towards the end of September, the Union put forward a plan
for direct military action against Russia. It was suggested that an
expeditionary force should be dispatched to the Ukraine where it
would incite rebellion, behind the front, against Tsarist rule.
Two of the Union's leaders, Marian Basok-Melenevski and Dr.
Leo Hankiewicz, left Vienna for the Balkans; they intended to
explore the situation in the area surrounding the region of their
proposed action, as well as to secure additional assistance. The
heads of the Austrian diplomatic missions to Constantinople and
to Sofia were advised by the Foreign Ministry of the impending
arrival of the two Ukrainians, and asked to assist them in every
way.8
Melenevski had known Helphand since the Iskra days at the
turn of the century, and Helphand's attitude to the war had been
received with special attention by the socialist contingent inside
the Ukrainian Union. It was therefore Helphand, rather than
Pallavicini, the Austrian Ambassador, whom Melenevski at once
sought out in Constantinople.
Helphand was ready to assist his Ukrainian friends. First, he
gave Melenevski a letter of introduction to the editors of the big
Constantinople newspapers; towards the end of October, the
Tasviri Efkar printed the first proclamation by the Union, and the
Austrian Ambassador at once reported to Vienna on this initial
success of Melenevski's mission.9 At the same time, the Armenian
and the Georgian socialists also declared themselves for the
independence of their countries. They, too, found encouragement from Helphand. His house in Constantinople became the
7
Memorandum by Consul Heinze, 6 August 1914, AA, WK 2; for the Austrian side
cf. HHuStA (Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv. Unpublished documents in the Vienna State
Archives), P.A.Krieg 21, 948.
8
The Foreign Minister to Pallavicini and to Freiherr von Mittag, 29 September 1914,
HHuStA, P.A.Krieg 8b, 902.
9
Pallavicini to Berchtold, 22 October 1914, HHuStA, P.A.Krieg 8b, 902.
M.R.-K
134
meeting-place of both the nationalist and the socialist conspirators against the Tsarist Empire.
At the same timelate in October 1914Basok-Melenevski
asked Helphand for his permission to publish, by the Ukrainian
Union, his article 'For DemocracyAgainst Tsarism'. Helphand gladly gave his consent, and then proceeded to use the
opportunity to formulate his attitude to the question of national
revolutions. He did so in a special preface to the pamphlet, the
translation of his essay, which appeared in Constantinople in
December 1914. He perceived the revolutionary energy in
nationalism, and he was prepared to harness it for the purpose of
the overthrow of the Tsarist regime. The experience of the year
1905 had shown, he explained, that the greatest reserves of
power at the disposal of the autocracy lay in the tight administrative centralization of the Russian Empire. The socialist opposition could, in his opinion, achieve success only if it allied itself
with the national minorities. The centralized, autocratic state had
to be replaced by a 'free union of all the nations of the large Empire'.
He told Basok-Melenevski, without much ado, that he thought
it pointless for the national leaders to continue to organize their
activities in exile; Helphand maintained that the revolutionary
movement would remain ineffectual if it confined itself purely to
the traditional pastimes of exile. The work performed on the spot,
in Russia, was what mattered. In this respect, however, there
existed no differences between the two men. The Union's plans
for the dispatch of its own private army to Russia met with
Helphand's full approval.
In the course of the preparations for the expedition, Melenevski introduced Helphand to Dr. Zimmer, who was now supervising the activities of the Union on behalf of the Austrian and
German diplomatic missions. Like Helphand, Zimmer knew the
Balkans well; he was the son of a German industrialist from
Mannheim, and he had settled, in 1909, as a gentleman-farmer on
the Black Sea. He had taken an interest in the tensions resulting
from the national aspirations of the minority groups in Russia:
when, in September 1914, he offered his services to the German
Embassy to Constantinople, they were gratefully accepted. He
was entrusted with the general, on-the-spot supervision of the
135
revolutionary movements supported by the German and the

Austrian Governments.
The Ukrainian Union benefited greatly from the co-operation
between Zimmer and Helphand. On 2 December, Pallavicini
again reported to Vienna on the surprising success of Melenevski's mission. His valuable socialist connexions, Pallavicini
indicated, gave Melenevski the entry into Russian Social Democrat circles, and secured the Russian socialist's support for the
policy of the Ukrainian Union. And two days before, Count
Tarnowski, the Austrian Minister to Sofia, had also reported in
an optimistic manner on the work of Dr. Hankiewicz, the local
representative of the Union. Dr. Hankiewicz, who had made
contact with a number of politicians and journalists, also entertained, in Tarnowski's words, 'certain secret relations' with
assorted socialists.10
In the meantime, the Union had succeeded in recruiting the
nucleus of the expeditionary force. There now existed a group of
Ukrainians and Caucasians who were prepared to carry out
subversive activities deep behind the fronts, in Russia's hinterland. But Zimmer's private army never left Constantinople: the
project which had begun with high promise came to a pitiful end.
The mistakes made during the past weeks now became painfully
apparent.
First of all, in its endeavour to recruit enough volunteers, the
Union had engaged men who were in fact quite unsuited to
partisan and subversive work. They possessed no expert knowledge or experience of such activities, their approach to the
difficult task was amateur, with too much sense of adventure and
too little military organization. And, worst of all, they had no
notion of the meaning of security. As early as November 1914
to the surprise of the governments in Berlin and Viennathe
Russian migr press published the first reports on the activities
of the Ukrainian Union.11 In these articles early in the war, the
first sinister reports of Helphand's subversive activities appeared:
for the first time the web of rumour, that later was to be spun
10
11
Pallavicini to the Foreign Ministry, telegram No. 898, and Count Tarnowski to Consul
Urban, telegram No. 1256, of 30 November 1914. HHuStA, P.A.Krieg 8b, 902.
Golos, 11 November 1914; cf. P. S. Melgunov, Zolotoi nemetskii klyuch, Paris, 1940,
pp. 18-20.
136
in such complexity that it was impossible to disentangle, began

to gather around his name. He had to learn how to deal with it;
we shall have occasion to observe what kind of technique he
developed. This first time, however, he was convinced that the
Russian migrs in Switzerland and in France could know but
little, and he flatly denied his connexions with the Union.12
Finally, the whole enterprise came to a complete standstill
when Enver Pasha raised objections against the expedition on
strategic grounds. Supported by General Liman von Sanders, a
German who was then in Turkish services, Enver succeeded in
having the dispatch of the expeditionary force postponed until
Turkey should have gained naval supremacy in the Black
Sea. This was in the middle of November, a few days after
Turkey entered, on the side of the Central Powers, into the
war.13
Despite the failure of the Union to advance beyond political
agitation, Helphand was far from discouraged. He had convinced
himself, by the beginning of December 1914, that he possessed
an unfailing method for the overthrow of the Tsarist regime. It
could not long resist a direct alliance between the Central Powers
and the Russian revolutionaries, between the Prussian guns and
the Russian proletariat. Although the motives of the two parties
to the alliance differed, in the defeat and overthrow of Tsarism
they shared an immediate aim. Helphand believed this alliance to
be of immense and immediate advantage to both sides; he was
quite unconcerned with their obvious incompatibility, or with the
difficulties which lay in the distant future.
It was early in January 1915 that he asked Zimmer to arrange a
meeting for him with the German Ambassador to Constantinople.
On 7 January Freiherr von Wangenheim received Helphand, who
put the following plan before him: 'The interests of the German
government', Helphand stated bluntly, 'are identical with those
of the Russian revolutionaries.' Helphand said that the 'Russian
Democrats could only achieve their aim by the total destruction
of Tsarism and the division of Russia into smaller states. On the
12
13
cf. 'Ein Verleumdungswerk', in Die Glocke, 1915, p. 127.

Pallavicini to the Foreign Ministry, telegram No. 837, 17 November 1914, HHuStA,
P.A.Krieg 8b, 902.
137
other hand, Germany would not be completely successful if it

were not possible to kindle a major revolution in Russia. However, there would still be a danger to Germany from Russia, even
after the war, if the Russian Empire were not divided into a
number of separate parts.'
Some of the Russian revolutionaries were already at work;
there was, however, still a certain lack of cohesion between the
various factions. The Mensheviks, for instance, had not yet
joined forces with the Bolsheviks; Helphand told the Ambassador
that he saw it as his task 'to create unity and organize a rising on a
broad basis'. A congress of the Russian revolutionary leaders
should meet, possibly in Geneva, as the first step towards restoring unity; but for all this, considerable sums of money would be
needed. Helphand expected, however, the Imperial Government
in Berlin to do more than dole out money for the purposes of the
revolution in Russia. He was confident, Helphand told the
Ambassador, that the German Social Democrats would be
rewarded, for their 'patriotic attitude', by an immediate improvement in primary schools and in average working hours.
The following day, on 8 January, Wangenheim reported on the
conversation with Helphand in a detailed telegram to the Foreign
Ministry.14 The Ambassador stressed the 'useful services' which
Helphand had rendered in Constantinople, and added that the
attitude of this 'well-known Russian socialist and publicist' had
been, since the beginning of the war, 'definitely pro-German';
he also transmitted Helphand's request that he should be allowed
to present his plans personally to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.
Helphand, for his part, came away from the meeting with
Wangenheim with the impression that he could expect a favourable reception at the Wilhelmstrasse. He set off on the trip before
the telegram reached the Foreign Ministry.
He made a number of stops on the way: the first one in Bucharest, where he arrived on 9 January. Of the local socialists, Helphand knew Dimitru Marinescu and Dobrogeanu-Gherea; but
most important, his old friend Rakovsky was now back in the
Rumanian capital, leading the local party and editing its daily
newspaper.
14
Z. A. B. Zeman, Germany and the Revolution in Russia, document No. 1, London, 1958.
138
Helphand knew he had to tread carefully in Bucharest. A few

weeks before his arrival there, Sdekum, the Reichstag deputy,
had visited the Rumanian capital on a mission sponsored by the
German Foreign Ministry and by the party executive, in an
attempt to influence the local socialists in Germany's favour.
Sdekum had succeeded only in bringing the Rumanian socialists
under suspicion of having accepted political subsidies from
Berlin. And as far as Helphand was concerned, their attitude to
the war by no means corresponded to his own. The party leaders
were determined to remain neutral and to keep their country out
of the war.
Though at all events preferable to war on Germany, neutrality
did not necessarily imply an anti-German attitude. Helphand
understood the position of the Rumanian socialists, and he made
no attempt to win them over for the policy of an alliance with
Germany. Helphand understood the Balkan milieu well, and he
was much more successful than Sdekum. If he wanted
assurance of a 'well-disposed' neutrality, Marinescu and Gherea
were quite prepared to give it. Rakovsky, on the other hand,
could see beyond the narrow confines of local politics: with
him, Helphand could speak quite openly, and not only about the
Rumanian situation.
All the evidence points to the fact that Rakovsky declared
himself ready to accept subsidies for the Rumanian party, and
that he agreed with Helphand's plans in regard to Russia. Three
days after Helphand's arrival in Bucharest, the German Minister
there, von dem Bussche-Haddenhausen (who had been advised
by the Foreign Ministry of Helphand's impending visit) telegraphed Berlin that he was now in a position to let the Rumanian
socialists 'have money in an inconspicuous manner', and he asked
for the approval of an expenditure of 100,000 lei.15 On the day
when the approval from Berlin reached Bucharest, Bussche met
the socialist leader personally, for the first time. Nevertheless, at
the party congress in the same year, Rakovsky claimed that only
Helphand himself had subscribed 300 lei for the socialist newspaper, a sum which was later paid back.16 At the time of the
15
16
Zernan, op. cit., document No. 84, note 1.

Internationale Korrespondenz, Berlin, 1915, No. 45, p. 545.
139
congress Rakovsky was the main speaker at a socialist mass

demonstration for peace, which Bussche described as having
been 'supported by me and the Austro-Hungarian Minister'.
After Rumania's entry into the war on the Entente side, the
Rumanian police arrested Rakovsky at the end of 1916, on
charges of having conducted propaganda against the war. In 1917,
after Rumania's speedy defeat, Rakovsky emerged in Stockholm,
running, as usual, a Rumanian socialist newspaper. He then
asked the German authorities to allow his wife transit across
Germany so that she could come and join him in Sweden.
Bussche was now in Berlin, working as Under-Secretary of State
in the Foreign Ministry; he supported Rakovsky's request,
stating quite plainly that 'formerly, Rakovsky was connected
with us and working for us in Rumania'. There is an ironic
postscript to the story. When Rakovsky stood in the dock at the
great Moscow trial of, in Stalinist official jargon, the 'Block of
Rights and Trotskyites', Vishinsky made, on behalf of the prosecution, precisely the same charge against Rakovsky. The veteran
socialist, the former Soviet Ambassador to London, might well
have wondered where the public prosecutor got his information.
However, in January 1915 Helphand had every reason to be
satisfied with the outcome of his lightning descent on Bucharest.
In a matter of a few hours, he succeeded where a prominent
German socialist had failed so dismally. He was now moving fast.
When Bussche asked the Berlin office for a special allowance of
100,000 lei, Helphand had already spent two days in the Bulgarian capital.
He arrived in Sofia on 10 January. He was well known among
the Bulgarian socialists who still regarded him, in a rather
outdated way, as an orthodox Marxist, a leading critic of revisionist tendencies. The party was divided at the time into two factions; the 'narrow' and the 'broad' socialists. The split had been
caused by a problemthe attitude to the small peasantssimilar
to that which had occupied the Germans during the agrarian
debate in the eighteen-nineties. Because of the position he had
then taken, Helphand was held in especially high esteem by the
'narrow' faction of the Bulgarian party. Although its leaders,
Dimitar Blagoev and Georgi Kirkov, hardly differed from their
140
Rumanian comrades in their attitude to the war, they thought

they owed it to Helphand, their old comrade-in-arms, to enable
him to put his ideas before a large audience.
They invited him to appear as one of the main speakers at a
mass meeting on the following day. His name retained its old
power of attraction among the Bulgarian socialists. On 11 January
1915, some 4,000 people assembled in a hall called 'New America',
the largest theatre in town, and when Helphand arrived on the
platform he was greeted by 'tumultuous applause'.17 What
Helphand had to say, however, soon made the ovations die down.
Tsarism, he pointed out, threatened European democracy. The
achievements of socialism were being threatened by the Russian
Army, and Germany was carrying the main burden in the struggle
against Muscovite absolutism. He then came out into the open.

He exhorted the Bulgarians to enter the war on the side of
Germany. Her victory, he said, was not only necessary in the
interest of socialism, but also for the national development of
the Balkan states, and for the independence of the Ukrainians, the
Caucasians, and the Poles.
By the time Helphand finished the speech there was an icy
silence in the hall. The Bulgarian socialists were clearly not
prepared to budge from their position of neutrality. Some time
before the meeting, Plekhanov, the founder-father of Russian
Marxism, had been trying to do, on behalf of Russia, what
Helphand was now doing on behalf of Germany. They were both
utterly unsuccessful. In the party organ, Nove Vreme, Blagoev
wrote that Helphand, like Plekhanov, was a patriot and a chauvinist. The Berlin party leadership, which Helphand had defended with conviction, had, in Blagoev's view, betrayed the
German workers on 4 August 1914. The true representatives of
the German proletariat, Blagoev hopefully believed, were the
extremists around Rosa Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and Mehring,
who had openly condemned the war.
And then the pro-Russian Bulgarian patriots also chipped in.
They furiously attacked first Helphand's political line, and then
his personal integrity. They dismissed him as an agent of German
17
D. Blagoev, Izbrany Proizvedeniya; 'Plekhanov i Parvus', Sofia, 1951, vol. 2, pp. 669-
76.
141
Imperialism, a traitor to socialism; they made it quite plain that

he was a man who could be bought, a shady businessman who
had made a fortune by sinister transactions, and in whose support
for the German Government pecuniary motives played a large
part.
Helphand believed that the press campaign against him had
been inspired by the Russian legation in Sofia: be it as it may, his
visit there brought him a lot of publicity but little success. The
German Minister himself, von Michahelles, a conventional and
reserved diplomat of the old school, could not quite believe in
Helphand's authenticity as a political adviser: the two men got
on very badly. In contrast to Bussche in Bucharest, who was
open-minded and who had a flair for political improvisation,
Michahelles had no time for experiments of Helphand's kind. It
was to Bussche that Helphand reported on his mission to Bulgaria; he returned to the Rumanian capital at the end of January.
Early the following month, Helphand arrived in Vienna. He
was much more interested in establishing contacts with the
remaining Russian exiles than with the local Austrian socialists.
Most of the Russians of the large pre-war colony in the Habsburg
capital had been compelled, as enemy aliens, to cross the frontier
into Switzerland on the outbreak of the war; Helphand was
fortunate that Ryazanov was among those who had stayed
behind. As an expert on Marx, Ryazanov enjoyed a good reputation among the Austrian and German socialists; he was wellconnected in Vienna, in the university and official circles, and
felt quite at home there. He was an old friend of Helphand.
A long time before their reunion in 1915, they had been pupils,
in the eighteen-nineties, at the same school in Odessa. When
Ryazanov came to Germany at the turn of the century, Helphand
introduced him to the German socialist leaders and arranged for
his contributions to appear in Kautsky's monthly, Neue Zeit. And
since the split in the Russian Social Democrat party in 1903,
both men were highly critical of the Russian party organization. In
comparison with the mass movements in western Europe, they
found it lacking, mainly on account of remoteness from the
political realities in Russia. There existed striking political
affinities between the two men: in St. Petersburg in 1905,
142
Ryazanov emerged as the leading member of the group of

'Parvusists'.
Their friendship was based on a similarity of political attitudes,
as well as on certain features of character common to the two
men. They were both too detached, too critical and self-confident
to fit easily into an organization; although Ryazanov's tastes were
more in the direction of precise scholarshiphe later became the
Director of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Moscowthe two
friends were united in their contempt for intellectual mediocrity,
and convinced of the originality of their own ideas. There were,
however, differences in their attitudes to the war: Ryazanov
sympathized with the internationalistswho were opposed to
participation by the socialists in the wararound Trotsky,
Martov, and the circle of their friends connected with the newspaper Nashe Slovo in Paris. This did not, however, stop Ryazanov
offering his friend hospitality at his house in Vienna. Helphand
stayed there a few months after Lenin had done so, when the
Austrian authorities had allowed the Bolshevik leader, after a
brief term of imprisonment, to proceed on his trip to Switzerland.
The stay with Ryazanov was of the utmost importance for
Helphand, and he made good use of it. He was looking for up-todate information about the Russian Social Democrat exiles: on
their policies and mood, on their latest alliances and enmities.
His host was in a position to provide it. Ryazanov had at his house
all the important legal and illegal publications; he was in touch
with the Russian party leaders, and he knew what they were doing
and thinking. Such information was just as important for Helphand as the private contacts with the Russian socialists, which
Ryazanov was able easily to establish.
Through Ryazanov, Helphand opened up another secret
channel which led deep into the complex network of the Russian
socialist groups. Ryazanov's past tied him to Helphand with links
of affection and political sympathies; he was not a man of petty
scruple who was afraid to compromise for the sake of tactical
advantage. It did not require a high degree of political sophistication to perceive that the Russian socialistsand in particular
those who had, or were about to declare themselves against the
warwere a small, divided, and isolated group, and that they
143
might need allies who could offer concrete assistance. Ryazanov

had every reason to believe that Helphand would become such an
ally. His work did not go unrewarded. Among the few extant
papers that Helphand left behind him there is a banker's order
for 5,000 marks, made out in Ryazanov's favour in 1915.18
There were a few other small matters for Helphand to attend
to in Vienna. Ryazanov introduced him to Abramovich, a member
of the Menshevik central committee, and one of the leaders of the
Jewish socialist Bund. He was deeply impressed by Helphand,
but not so much as to approve of his attitude to the war.19 Helphand also talked to the editor-in-chief of the Italian newspaper
Avanti, Geaccinto Serrati, who assured him that Italy would
remain neutral: Helphand told the German Ambassador to
Vienna, von Tschirschky, about the views of the Italian
journalist.20
Helphand was now ready to go to Berlin. He had done a great
deal on his way from Constantinople, and he had gathered much
of the information he needed. His was not a return of the prodigal
son. Some five years earlier, Helphand had stopped in Vienna on
his way to the Near East. He was then a penniless journalist,
living from hand to mouth, driven by the need for temporary
escape and by the desire for adventure. Now, although he had
broken some more of the unwritten rules of socialismhe had
made too much money, and his connexions with the powers-thatbe were too intimatehe could face his comrades with confidence. He thought they could use his services, and he knew he
could use theirs.
His material circumstances had changed considerably; so had
his political position. He was now one of those socialists who
approved of the war: that he did so for other than patriotic
reasons was not immediately apparent. He had had the first taste,
in Constantinople and in Sofia, of the kind of price he would have
to pay. A new picture of his personality would soon emerge: the
image of a radical socialist and revolutionary would be overlaid
by that of a propagandist of Germany's victory. It was not too
18
19
20
Nachlass Helphand, Report 92.

Abramovich, In Tsvei Revolutsies, vol. 1, p. 374.
AA, von Tschirschky to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, 10 February 1915, in
WK IIC sec.
144
high a price: it would not mean his exclusion from the socialist
ranks. He had had his first encounters with the German diplomats,
the men who were now going to play an important role in his life.
Some of them trusted him, but none entirely, and he did not trust
them. In the world they were accustomed to, he cut a bizarre
figure; it would take some time, especially for the stiff butterflycollar men, to come to terms with his existence, let alone with his
political plans. He of course did not have to tell them everything,
and he very rarely did. He became used to operating in the
shadowy background of the political stage: he became accustomed
to the exercise of influence without ever appearing as one of the
leading actors. He could be anonymous when he chose to, and
withdrawn. From this position Helphand was able to observe the
world with equanimity and, perhaps, even with contempt.
7
Between the Socialists and the Diplomats
The interview with the Ambassador to Constantinople
early in January had brought Helphand firmly to the attention of
the Foreign Ministry. It set in motion an intricate and powerful
machinery with which he was, as yet, little acquainted. On
10 January, von Jagow, the State Secretary, gave his agreement
to Helphand's reception at the Wilhelmstrasse; Dr. Kurt Riezler
was sent over from the General Headquarters to Berlin 'with
more detailed instructions', but Helphand was not to be told
where Riezler had come from.1 Dr. Max Zimmer, who had
returned from Constantinople, was also invited to Helphand's
audience in the Foreign Ministry, not, of course, without having
first been pledged to special secrecy.
Helphand's meeting with the diplomats took place at the end
of February: because of the nature of the business on hand, no
record of it was made. We are, however, fortunate in possessing
a detailed memorandum which Helphand handed in to the
Foreign Ministry a few days later, on 9 March 1915. It gives an
accurate picture of Helphand's part in the conversation. It is a
unique document, a plan, on a vast scale, for subversion of the
Tsarist Empire.
Helphand put a three-point plan before the German diplomats.
He suggested that support be given to the parties working for
social revolution in Russia, as well as to the minority nations
which were striving for independence from the Tsarist Empire;
he proposed the infiltration of Russia by propaganda, and an
international press campaign against Tsarism.
In regard to the support of the refractory nationalist groups,
Helphand put forward detailed suggestions on the way in which
the programme of national subversion could best be carried out.
1
Zeman, Germany and the Revolution in Russia, document No. 2.
146
In his view, the Ukrainians occupied the key position among the
minority nations; he regarded the conflict of economic interests
between the Ukrainian peasants and the Russian landowners as
especially promising. The Ukraine was the corner-stone which,
once removed, would destroy the centralized state. More than a
quarter of a century later, Alfred Rosenberg, one of the Nazi
experts on Helphand, incidentally held and practised precisely
the same views.
Finland offered, according to Helphand, a similar promise.
The Finns had opposed Russian rule in 1905, and they were
ready to resume their fight for independence. Helphand recommended that the Swedish Government should draw the Finns into
negotiations, and that military and political contacts should be
established between Berlin and Helsinki in order to prepare the
Finns for an armed uprising against Russia. He laid special stress
on the fact that these contacts would be valuable, before the outbreak of the revolution in Russia, for intelligence and communications. The easiest way of smuggling arms and explosives into the
Russian capital led across the Finnish frontier.
Helphand was less optimistic about the chances of success in
the multi-national area of the Caucasus. The independence movement in the South was fragmentary because of the existence of
various national groups: Helphand recommended consultation
with the Turkish Government. He suggested that the Turks
should convince the Moslems of the Caucasus to conduct a Holy
War on Russia only with the support of the local Christians.
Helphand expected the Armenians and the Georgians to give
the most vigorous lead; agitation among the Kuban cossacks
could also be conducted from Turkey, through the Ukrainian
liberation movement.
It was, however, the support of the socialist opposition that
lay at the centre of Helphand's interest. The history of the first
Russian revolution of 1905 had shown that the Tsarist Government needed speedy victories in order to counter the growing
discontent of the population. Since the development of the war
had dashed such hopes to the ground, it could now be assumed
that the refractory forces of nationalism would ally themselves
with the socialist revolutionary movements. It was, Helphand
147
insisted, in Germany's interest to accelerate this development.

First of all, connexions with the local strike committees had to
be established. Apart from the industrial areas in the Souththe
Donets basin, the oil industry in Baku and on the Black Sea, as
well as the Black Sea merchant marineHelphand emphasized
the revolutionary potential of Siberia. A large part of the population there was made up of political exiles, the military forces
stationed in Siberia were weak, and centres of political and military subversion could easily be established. At the same time,
preparations should be made to facilitate the flight of the exiled
revolutionaries to European Russia. In this way, St. Petersburg
would gain 'many thousands of the ablest agitators'.
Helphand regarded the local movements as a basis on which,
early in the following year, a general strike could be organized:
it should be conducted under the slogan 'Freedom and Peace'.
He then singled out the Putilov, Obukhov, and Baltic works in
St. Petersburg as the centres of industrial unrest; the support of
the railwaymen for the strike he regarded as of the highest
importance. He was convinced that 'Strikes here and there, the
risings produced by distress and the increase in political agitation
will all embarrass the Tsarist government. If it takes reprisals, this
will result in growing bitterness: if it shows indulgence, this will
be interpreted as a sign of weakness and fan the flames of the
revolutionary movement even more.'2
Helphand made it quite clear to the German diplomats that the
Russian Social Democrats were alone capable of organizing the
strike: he pointed to the Bolsheviks, under Lenin's leadership,
as the most effective organization. He thought it essential that all
the socialist groups that were to be supported by Germany should
form a united front. The Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks would
have to come to an agreement; the Jewish Bund, the Spilka (the
Ukrainian organization), the two Social Democrat parties of
Poland, as well as those of Lithuania and Finland, would also be
represented. A socialist congress of unity in Switzerland or in
another neutral country, Helphand regarded as the most suitable
way of achieving this aim.
Finally, the press campaign that was to be conducted inside
2
Zeman, op. cit., Appendix I, Memorandum by Dr. Helphand, p. 144.
148
and outside Russia; infiltration of pacifist propaganda should be

accompanied by support for the migr press, in so far as it took
an anti-war, defeatist line. Helphand mentioned Goloswhich
later appeared under the name Nashe Slovoas a newspaper
which maintained a 'thoroughly objective attitude' to the war.
Helphand envisaged a world-wide drive for peace and against
Tsarism, in which the socialist press of all countries would play
an important part; he saw the two campaigns, inside and outside
Russia, as closely linked. He added that the United States,
because of the 'enormous number of Jews and Slavs there', who
represented a Very receptive element for anti-Tsarist agitation',
deserved some special attention.
Such was the plan Helphand put before the German diplomats.
Attached to the March memorandum, however, there was a fivepage supplement: its appearance and contents differ from the
main body of the document, and it is very likely that it was added
a few days later. Helphand summed up in it the result of his
activities in Bucharest, Sofia, and Vienna, as well as adding a few
afterthoughts on the contents of the memorandum.
He regarded the Balkan trip as a success. A change of mood
in favour of Germany was noticeable in the Rumanian as well as
in the Bulgarian press. 'The Bulgarian press is now completely
pro-German, and there is a noticeable swing in the attitude of the
Rumanian press. The provisions which we have made will soon
show even better results.'3 Helphand also reported that he had
succeeded in establishing the first contacts, through Sofia, with
the organization of the Russian sailors in Odessa, and he hoped
that he would be able to maintain the connexion through
Amsterdam. He then concluded the supplement with an elevenpoint programme, which somewhat modified the views expressed
in the main part of the memorandum.
He now gave the Bolsheviks the key place in his revolutionary
plans. Under point 1, Helphand wrote: 'Financial support for the
majority group [i.e. the Bolsheviks] of the Russian Social Democrats, which is fighting the Tsarist government with all the means
at its disposal. Its leaders are in Switzerland.'4 In Helphand's
opinion, Lenin's experienced group of professional revolu3
Zeman, op. cit., p. 150.
ibid., p. 150.
VII. Lenin and his sister
VIII. Konrad Haenisch
149
tionaries offered the best guarantee of success for the mass strike;
his previous central idea of a socialist congress of unity was now
relegated to the eighth place. After the reference to the Bolsheviks,
Helphand's second point mentioned the possibility of strikes in
Odessa and Nikolaev. Helphand had already put out the first
feelers to South Russia: we shall have occasion to discuss the
events in Nikolaev, where the strike movement in January 1916
reached the highest pitch of intensity.
It was not the day-dream of a fanatical conspirator: Helphand
had drafted a blue-print for the revolution. It was practical,
detailed, with all its parts creating an impressive wholeand it
was original. Helphand worked with the combined forces of
national and social disintegration; he built on the experiences of
1905, knowing that the World War would provide a more suitable
background than the Russo-Japanese War to revolutionary
events. He spoke of the 'preparations for a political mass strike',
rather than of the organization of the revolution, which, in his
view, was latent, needing only the appropriate impulse for its
release.
Helphand's plan for subversion was a calculated and sophisticated policy aimed at knocking Russia out of the war. He was
prepared to use every means for the achievement of this aim. 'Thus
the armies of the Central Powers and the revolutionary movement
will shatter the colossal political centralization which is the
embodiment of the Tsarist Empire and which will be a danger
to world peace for as long as it is allowed to survive, and will
conquer the stronghold of political reaction in Europe.'5 He
nevertheless left open the question of which other states in
Europe would be deprived of protection by the downfall of
Tsarism, the 'stronghold of political reaction'. There was no
need, Helphand may well have thought, to spell out all his
intentions for the benefit of the German diplomats.
The strategy Helphand suggested can, of course, be faulted on
grounds of the long-term incompatibility of the two partners to
the alliance. He knew about it, but that was not, at the time, his
concern. In the long run he expected socialism to benefit more
than the Central Powers: early in 1915, Helphand was in fact
5
ibid., p. 150.
M.R.-L
150
deceiving the diplomats rather than the socialists. His indirectly

expressed intentionto make socialism into the leading force in
Europe with the help of Imperial Germanyshows that his
readiness to co-operate with the Berlin Government was not, as
Lenin came to suspect, based on Helphand's German chauvinism. He was working with the Imperial Government, but not
for it; he was sufficiently independent, financially and politically,
to indulge in his own pursuits. The situation had a certain ironic
quality: he was helping capitalism to dig its own grave.
The diplomats, confident of the strength of their own position,
cared even less than Helphand about the long-term incompatibility of the allies. Helphand was offering them a lot, and he had
made his appearance on the scene at the right time. The ground
had been prepared for him. On 18 November 1914, Falkenhayn,
then the Chief of the General Staff, informed the Reich Chancellor
that the war situation was serious. The failure of the Marne
offensive had convinced the German military leaders that the
opportunity for a decisive, lightning victory had been lost.
Germany was now facing the danger of collapsing, after a protracted war of attrition, in face of the material preponderance of
the Allies. The military leaders therefore requested the Chancellor to take steps to break the enemy alliance by political means.
The Reich rulers were thinking in terms of a separate peace
with either France or Russia: it would leave them in a better
position for the settling of accounts with Britain. The first peace
feelers put out to Paris brought no encouraging results. And as the
hopes for a separate peace in the West declined, the expectations
for an agreement with the Tsar rose. Falkenhayn and Tirpitz in
particular supported the idea of a peace in the East. It was
Crown Prince Wilhelm who took it upon himself to open up
contacts with the Court at St. Petersburg. In his letter to the
Grossherzog von Hessen, on 6 February 1915, he was clearly
excited and pleased with the idea: 'I am of the opinion that it is
absolutely necessary to conclude a separate peace with Russia.
First of all, it is too silly that we should hack each other to pieces
only so that England could fish in dark waters, and then we would
have to get all our forces back here, so that we could put the
French in order, because this protracted stationary war costs
151
much sacrifice, and it does not improve the morale of our troops.
Could you not establish contact with Nikki [the Tsar] and advise
him to agree with us amicably, the desire for peace is apparently
very great in Russiaonly we would have to get rid of that
bastard Nikola Nikolaevich [the Commander-in-Chief of the
Russian forces]. . . .'6
However, there existed serious objections against a separate
peace in the east. Zimmermann, the Under-Secretary of State in
the Foreign Ministry, argued that Russia, no less than England,
was the Reich's enemy. 'The Russian is not a friend of ours. . . .
Russia's ultimate aim is the union of all Slavs of the Balkans and
of the Dual Monarchy under her rule. . . . I am convinced that
we must, for the sake of our own desire for self-preservation,
oppose, with all our strength, such a drive for Russia's expansion.
If we don't settle accounts with our eastern neighbour now, we
shall certainly run into new difficulties and another war, perhaps
in a few years. . . .'7
Nevertheless, a separate peace with Russia remained the only
way out of Germany's military impasse. The Reich Government
soon decided to extend, in earnest, peace feelers to Russia; until
the end of July 1915, separate peace in the East was thought to lie
within the reach of Berlin. Helphand's March memorandum
therefore fitted well into the general scheme. The German diplomats did not, of course, believe in any nonsense about ridding
Russia of her dynasty and paving the way for socialism. But they
were interested in the encouragement of internal unrest in
Russia, in order to bring home the point, in St. Petersburg, that
the conclusion of peace was urgent. The Foreign Ministry simply
regarded the support of the Russian revolutionaries as a means
of exerting pressure on the Tsar, and thus speeding up diplomatic negotiations.
For Helphand, on the other hand, separate peace with the
Tsar meant the collapse of his whole plan. Peace would free the
Russian Government to suppress the revolution by force, in
the same way as in 1905. This diversity of aimthe diplomats
wanted peace, Helphand a revolutionwas the main source of
6
E. Zechlin, in Das Parlament, 15 May 1963, p. 54.

E. Zechlin, Das Parlament, 17 May 1961, pp. 275-7.
152
friction between them in the early months of their co-operation.

Helphand never tired of warning the diplomats of the dangers of a
separate peace with the Tsar. For their part, the diplomats were
not greatly worried about the ultimate socialist aims Helphand
was striving for. Only the Minister to Copenhagen, Count
Brockdorff-Rantzau, thought it necessary to point out, in a private
letter to the Under State Secretary, the dangers involved in
supporting Helphand: 'It might perhaps be risky to want to use
the powers ranged behind Helphand, but it would certainly be an
admission of our own weakness if we were to refuse their services
out of fear of not being able to direct them. . . . Those who do
not understand the signs of our times will never understand which
way we are heading or what is at stake at this moment.'8
Both parties knew what they wanted, and were prepared to
take risks. Peace with Russia and the victory of Germany, revolution and the triumph of socialism, were at stake. They were able
to come to an agreement. From the middle of March 1915, Helphand became the leading adviser to the German Government on
revolutionary affairs in Russia. His assignment was to organize a
united front of European socialism against the Tsarist regime,
and to enable the socialist party organizations in Russia to promote their country's collapse through defeatist propaganda,
strikes, and sabotage. At the end of March he received, from the
Foreign Ministry, the first payment of one million marks for these
purposes. According to his request the money was transferred,
'exclusive of losses incurred in exchange', to Bucharest, Zrich,
and Copenhagen.9 The Foreign Ministry also had the Prussian
deportation order of 1893 against Helphand, withdrawn. He was
issued with a police pass, which freed him from all the restrictions
on enemy aliens then in force.
But what of Helphand himself? Was he doing all this for the
love of the game? Only partly. He represented a special kind of
revolutionary: not for him were pockets stuffed with explosives
and illegal literature, the secret codes and frontier crossings, and,
at the end of the journey, imprisonment. Instead, he operated on
a grand scale, using the levers of power: money, high-level con8

ibid., document No. 3.
153
tacts, a formidable machine of war. All this was sheer delight for
him. Behind it there was a hard, calculating ambition. He was
preparing the ground for his ultimate entry as a reformer, a
saviour, the leader of the revolution. There was more than a hint
of this in the suggestion he had made for a socialist congress of
unity. The idea might well have occurred to him that, with the
help of unlimited financial means, the Russian party could be
reorganized. It could be converted, under his influence, from a
factious clique of conspirators into an instrument of revolutionary power.
Yet in the immediate future, Helphand had a difficult time
before him. He had been out of touch with European socialism
for nearly five years: the leaders of the German party he had
known at the turn of the century had been replaced by a younger
generation of politicians. Bebel, Auer, and Singer were dead;
Karl Kautsky had severed his connexions with the party leadership and formed an alliance with Eduard Bernstein: they were
highly critical of the conniving, by the majority of the German
socialists, at the war. Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring had
made a clean break with the party, openly declaring their
opposition to further war credits.
Helphand knew none of the current party leaders: Hugo
Haase, Friedrich Ebert, Philipp Scheidemann. They were all
practical politicians; they had no interest in theory in general,
nor in Helphand's past achievements in that field in particular.
They did, however, know something of the scandals connected
with his name, especially that of the Gorki affair. Then the
rumours which reached Berlin from the Balkans, early in the
war, did nothing to vindicate his reputation. Tales of his legendary riches, as well as the first critical references in the socialist
newspapers to his work with the Ukrainian Union, preceded his
arrival in Germany and again revived interest in Helphand, as
well as the old, unforgotten resentments.
The first calls Helphand made on his comrades in Berlin did
not succeed in allaying their suspicions. Even those socialists
who gave the Imperial Government their full support, whose
political position was, in this regard, the same as Helphand's,
found themselves unable to say anything in his favour. Hugo
154
Haase, the chairman of the party, went as far as warning his

comrades against any kind of contact with Helphand: he expressed the suspicion that Helphand was a Russian agent.10
Eduard David summed up the attitude of the party leadership to
Helphand in his diary. 'A very splendid case indeed: an ultraradical revolutionary; a Russian informer, a scoundrel, a confidence trickster (Gorki affair!), and now a Turkish agent and
speculator.11 When Parvus called on the editor of the party
organ, Vorwrts, Heinrich Strobel received him with ill-concealed contempt. He was ironical and insulting; when Helphand
complained that he could not get rid of the 'bad smell of his
radical past', and that he still had not been granted German
citizenship, Strobel advised him not to show so much 'selfassurance and talent' but simply to write 'patriotic articles like a
good boy, as Haenisch was doing, and then he might even receive
an honorary citizenship'.12
Nor were Helphand's former friends on the radical left of
the party delighted by his return to Berlin. When he visited Rosa
Luxemburg, she gave him no opportunity to speak and showed
him the door. Helphand's second trip to her flat was also unsuccessful: by then, Rosa Luxemburg had been arrested. Karl
Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin, and Leo Yogiches also received him
coldly. Zetkin, who, at the Stuttgart party congress many years
before, had been Helphand's only comrade to take his side in the
controversy with Bernstein, now called him a 'souteneur of
imperialism', who had sold out to the German Government.
Helphand's appeals to their former friendship failed to make
any impression. The break was final: their ways had parted, once
and for all.
Helphand was, however, tenacious, and he had one ally. His
old friend Konrad Haenisch was completely on his side. On the
outbreak of the war, Haenisch's radicalism had proved shallow:
there was a hard patriotic core in him and, on 4 August 1914,
he gave his whole-hearted support to the Government. He was
glad that Helphand had reached, though in a different way, the
10
11
12
Sdekum papers, entry for 1 March 1915 in the diary; Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
Entry for 28 February 1915, Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
H. Strbel, Die Weltbhne, No. 51, 11 December 1919.
155
same decision. He was one of the few German socialists to give

Helphand an enthusiastic welcome. Owing to Haenisch's cautious
mediation, Helphand succeeded, in the following months, in
removing the suspicions of the right wing of the party under
Eduard David and Lensch, as well as in gaining direct access to
Ebert and Scheidemann.
His reception in Germany was a foretaste of what was awaiting
him in Switzerland, the home of most of the Russian exiles. But
before he embarked on the trip to the decisive meetings with the
Russians in Switzerland, Helphand returned, in the middle of
April, to the Balkans. He first wanted to wind up his private
affairs in Constantinople. On his way there he made a stop in
Bucharest, where he once again met Rakovsky and Bussche, the
German Minister. Having had a part of the one million marks the
Foreign Ministry had put at his disposal transferred to a bank in
the Rumanian capital, Helphand attempted to persuade Rakovsky
Trotsky's old friend and political associateto siphon the
money off to the Russian socialist exiles in Paris, who, under
Trotsky, Martov, and Lunacharsky, were engaged in publishing
the defeatist newspaper, Nashe Slovo. Helphand was probably
successful: Trotsky said later, in New York, that he had received
the money for Nashe Slovo mainly from Rakovsky.13
It is ironical to consider that it was Trotsky, who, a few weeks
before Helphand's meeting with Rakovsky in Bucharest, had
lashed out against his former friend in Nashe Slovo. In his
'Epitaph for a Living Friend', published in the middle of February, Trotsky drew a sharp distinction between the old radical
Parvus before 1914, and the 'political Falstaff' and chauvinist
who emerged after the outbreak of the war. Trotsky conceded
that Helphand had been a figure of historical importance, a friend
and a teacher of his. Since 4 August 1914, Parvus was, in Trotsky's
eyes, dead. 'This is Parvus, whom, for many years, we saw as our
friend, and whom we now have to place on the list of the
politically deceased.'14 The distinction between the old and
the new Parvus, first drawn by Trotsky, has remained valid for the
13
14
cf. David Shub, 'Lenin i Vilgelm II. Novoe o germano-bolshevitskom zagovore

I 9 1 7 , Novy Zhurnal, June 1959, pp. 226-7.
Nashe Slovo, 14 February 1915.
156
communist publicists and historians. They still find words of

praise for Parvus, the socialist thinker; Parvus in the war, on the
other hand, is described as a chauvinist and a profiteer, a horrible
example of the decline of the Second International.
Trotsky's article certainly contributed to the hardening of
opinion against his former friend in exile circles. Yet Helphand was anything but petty. Although Trotsky had made his
mission more difficult, he was bent on swiftly carrying it out. He
was not without assistance. About the time of the publication of
Trotsky's article, Karl Radek was busy making Helphand the
subject of a lively discussion among the Russian exiles in Switzerland. As a Jewish immigrant from Austrian Poland, Radek had
joined the German party before the war. He then played a conspicuous rolefirst as Rosa Luxemburg's friend, later as her
enemyin the party's radical group. He was a talented and
cynical publicist, and as such he had made his name in the
German movement. On the outbreak of the war, in order to avoid
military service in the Austro-Hungarian forces, Radek moved to
Switzerland. His pacifist views did not prevent him from developing a warm admiration for Helphand.
Helphand, for his own part, could not have wished for a better
public-relations man. Though unpaid, Radek was very active on
his behalf. He was fond of telling political anecdotes about
Helphand in the Berne cafs, to any of the Russian exiles who
cared to listen. Radek spun tales about Helphand's relations with
Melenevski and the Ukrainian Union; even when he told of
Helphand's affairs with women, or his dishonesty in financial
matters, Radek did not really sound very disapproving. He may
have felt that Helphand had realized a lot of what he himself was
secretly desiring; his listeners certainly got the impression that
there was in Radek a hipsch shtika good bitof Helphand.15
In the middle of May 1915, Helphand himself arrived in
Switzerland. The impression he made on the Russian exiles
surpassed even Radek's fantastic yarns. Helphand did not just
move into Bauer au Lac, one of the most expensive hotels in
Zrich: he set up court there. He lived like an oriental potentate,
surrounded by an ostentatious show of wealth. There was usually
15
A. Litwak, Geklibene Schriftn (in Yiddish), New York, 1945, p. 254.
157
a retinue of rather well-endowed blondes about; his liking

for enormous cigars was matched by his indulgence in champagne: preferably a whole bottle for breakfast. His appearance,
too, had changed. His massive, gigantic figure was more puffed
out than ever. The broad, bull-like face with its high forehead,
tiny nose, and carefully trimmed beard, had developed a flabby
double-chin, behind which his neck completely disappeared. The
small lively eyes were deeply embedded in fat. His short legs were
barely strong enough to support his body, and when he was
standing up or walking, he seemed to use his arms to maintain
himself on an even keel. This was not the man many of the
Russian exiles remembered from the time of the first revolution
when he was scraping a meagre living as a journalist, when his
old and tattered clothes made him, even in appearance, one of
them.
Now his actions seemed almost calculated to arouse the contempt of his former friends. Comrade Ekaterina Gromanat one
time Helphand's mistress, who was known under her cover
name 'the wave' when she worked illegally in St. Petersburg
did, however, take it upon herself to spread the news of Helphand's arrival in the Russian colony; he also gave her money for
distribution among the poorer exiles. The gesture further intensified the rumours of Helphand's fantastic riches.
A meeting with Lenin was, however, Helphand's most urgent
task. He knew that of all the various factions of the party, the
Bolsheviks ran the most experienced and efficient organization.
Lenin had already spoken out against the victory of the Tsarist
regime in the war. He wanted an immediate revolutionan
international revolution in all the belligerent countries: the
transformation of the imperialist war into a series of civil wars
but a revolution above all else. If Helphand therefore achieved
an agreement with Lenin, it should then not be difficult to win
over the remaining factions of the party; in Helphand's scheme,
Lenin was the key to success.
Sometime at the end of May, Helphand, accompanied by
Ekaterina Groman, suddenly appeared at a restaurant where the
Russian exiles usually lunched. After inquiring if Lenin was
there, one of the Russians took him over to the Bolshevik leader's
158
table: Lenin was having a quiet meal with Nadezhda Krupskaya,

his wife, Inessa Armand, his friend, and Kasparov. After a brief
conversation, Lenin and Krupskaya left the restaurant with
Helphand, and took him to their modest flat in Distelweg.
Helphand himself described the ensuing conversation: 'I explained to him my views on the social-revolutionary consequences
of the war, and at the same time drew his attention to the fact that,
as long as the war lasted, no revolution would occur in Germany
and that, at this time, a revolution was possible in Russia only,
where it would break out as the result of German victories. He
dreamt, however, of the publication of a socialist journal, with
which, he believed, he could immediately drive the European
proletariat from the trenches into a revolution.'16
A Bolshevik called Siefeldt, who was told by Lenin about the
meeting shortly after it had taken place, reports that Lenin
hardly gave Helphand enough time to finish talking, saying that
he regarded Helphand as an agent of Scheidemann and the other
German socialists turned chauvinists, and that he wanted to have
nothing to do with him. Lenin then apparently saw his visitor
to the door, asking him never to return.17
Whatever turn the conversation took, the essential point is
quite clear: Helphand and Lenin did not reach an agreement.
The conversation took place under the shadow of the old personal
aversion, dating back to the early years of the century; since the
Bolshevik-Menshevik split, Helphand had repeatedly criticized
Lenin for his dogmatic narrowness and an egocentric approach
to matters of organization; for his own part, Lenin resented
Helphand's overbearing and patriarchal attitudes. And differences
in character, in their ways of life, must have reinforced the sharply
divergent political attitudes of the two men.
In addition, the likelihood that Lenin saw in Helphand a rival
for the leadership of the revolutionary movement may also have
influenced his decision. Lenin had to take into account the fact
that, if successful in his scheme, Helphand would eventually
acquire control of the Russian socialist organizations, and, with
his financial resources and his intellectual ability, would be able
16
17

A. Siefeldt, Bakinskii Rabochii, No. 24, 1 February 1924.
159
to outmanoeuvre all the other party leaders. We know that the

same thought had occurred to Helphand himself. Yet Lenin
treated the whole incident with the utmost caution. In his public
declarations he never made a single reference to his meeting with
Helphand, nor did he denounce, as so many socialists did,
Helphand's personal qualities or his political designs. It is not
inconceivable that Lenin wanted to keep a back door open: he
certainly used it later, as we shall have occasion to see.
In May 1915, however, the important thing for Helphand was
that he had failed to secure Lenin's co-operation, and that the
use of the Bolshevik underground organization had been denied
him. The plans he had outlined in Berlin early in March were
deprived of their main foundation. Without Lenin he was able
neither to create a united socialist front, nor to operate, with any
hope of success, inside Russia. Helphand now had to make a
choice. He could inform the Foreign Ministry of the failure of his
mission to Switzerland and then confine himself, in agreement
with the German diplomats, to, say, socialist propaganda in
western Europe. Or else he could attempt to form his own
organization, powerful and effective enough to extend its
activities into Russia. In this event, the aims of his programme
would remain unchanged: its implementation would have to be
revised.
It would have been out of character for Helphand to take the
first choice. He possessed a firm faith that there was no problem
that money and inspired improvisation could not solve. After all,
he had learned such methods in business, and he saw no reason
why they should not prove equally successful in politics.
He knew full well that he could not build up this independent
organization in Switzerland, in full view of the Russian party
leaders. Helphand needed a change of political climate, and the
Scandinavian countries were best suited to provide it. Stockholm
and Copenhagen were the clearing-houses for business transactions between the belligerent countries, and the centres of a
multitude of more or less effective espionage networks. In
addition, the 'northern underground'the traditional secret
channel linking the Russian exiles with their home country, in
successful operation since the days of Alexander Herzenpassed
160
through the Scandinavian capitals. Helphand's writings were

well known to the Danish socialists, and it was to Copenhagen
that he decided to move.
Before leaving Switzerland, however, Helphand had one more
thing to do. He had to recruit exiles who would be prepared to
work for him. He asked Ekaterina Groman to let it be known
among the Russians in Zrich that he wanted to get together a
group of research workers to staff an institute for scientific and
statistical studies in Copenhagen. It was a typical Helphand idea:
the institute was to be a front organization, giving protection to
secret and conspiratorial activities; recruitment for it could be
carried out quite openly. If the research workers later refused to
engage in political activities, they could still carry on with their
research; if not, so much the better, from Helphand's point of
view.
Initially, the recruitment drive was not a success. Helphand's
promise that the members of the staff could travel through
Germany on legal passports somewhat detracted from the value
of the assurance that their work would take place in neutral
Denmark, and not in Germany. The Russians became still more
suspicious when Hermann Greulich, the veteran Swiss Social
Democrat, revealed to the exile press the fact that he had been
commissioned to obtain visas at the German Consulate for their
transit through Germany. When Helphand left for Copenhagen
early in June 1915, he was accompanied by four Russian exiles.
Apart from the inevitable Ekaterina Groman, the others who
travelled with Helphand were Vladimir Davidovich Perasich,
Georgi Chudnovski, follower of Trotsky, and Arshak Gerasimovich, an Armenian Menshevik, and former deputy to the second
Duma.
The five travellers' departure from Switzerland occasioned yet
another flare-up of the controversy concerning Helphand. The
rumours finally filtered through to the leading Russian patriotic
newspapers: Helphand's research workers were described as
German agents, and he himself as a man heavily committed to the
German Government. Martov, the Menshevik leader, summed up
the views of the majority of the exiles when he wrote, in a letter
to a friend, that he regarded the behaviour of Helphand's
161
recruits as 'tactless' even when, at best, it might be assumed that

Helphand was not a direct agent of the German Government.18
Regardless of growing hostility, Helphand carried on recruitment among the Russian and Polish exiles in Scandinavia. He
knew he had financial security and political action to offer, two
things the exiles badly needed, but could never get. His activity
met with a mixed reception. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharinan unworldly Marxist scholar who was to rise high in the Soviet State,
only to be struck down, like most of his comrades, by Stalin
had arrived in Scandinavia shortly before Helphand, and he was
by no means averse to joining the Copenhagen institute. He
declined the offer only after Lenin's intervention.19 Another
refusal came from Zeth Hglund, the leader of the left-wing
group in the Swedish Social Democrat party, who, three years
before, had translated a number of Helphand's studies into
Swedish.
Helphand was more successful with a Menshevik called Moisei
Uritsky. In 1910, Uritsky had moved close to Trotsky and became responsible for organizing the transport of the newspaper
Pravda, then being published in Vienna, to Russia. When the
war broke out, Uritsky was in Germany, from where he went on
to Stockholm; he remained in Scandinavia until the outbreak of
the revolution in Russia in 1917. In that year he became a
prominent member of the Bolshevik central committee: in
January 1918 he was entrusted with the dissolution of the
Constituent Assembly. Uritsky's promising career ended in the
same year, at the hands of a member of the Social Revolutionary
party, who murdered him.
His first reaction to Helphand's advances was unfavourable:
Uritsky was not interested in working for a scientific institute.
He did, however, appreciate the value of Helphand's practical
plans, and in this respect the two men soon reached an agreement. Uritsky remained in touch with Helphand, occasionally
organizing courier services for him, which were usually carried
out by Alfred Kruse, the Danish socialist. In conversation,
18
19
Pisma Axelroda i Martova, Berlin, 1924. Martov to Semkovski, 10 July 1915, p. 344.
cf. Lenin's letter to the Bolshevik central committee, 12 December 1917, in Leninskii
Sbornik, Moscow, 1959, vol. XXXVI, p. 19.
162
Uritsky always expressed his approval of Helphand's activities;

on a number of occasions he defended Helphand as an honourable, trustworthy, and helpful comrade.20
Jakob Frstenberg was Helphand's most valuable acquisition.
Better known by his cover names Hanecki or Kuba, Frstenberg
was a Polish socialist who became one of Lenin's most trusted
friends. He was born in Warsaw in 1879, the son of a wealthy
family; after some years spent as a student in Berlin, Heidelberg,
and Zrich, he gave all his time and energy to party work,
distinguishing himself as a specialist in illegal transportation.
For two years before the war Frstenberg had lived with Lenin
in Poronino, a village near Cracow; after a short stay in Switzerland, he arrived in Scandinavia in the summer of 1915, about the
same time as Helphand.
Frstenberg was a reticent and completely reliable conspirator;
he was versatile, capable of acting in two or more roles simultaneously. In his personality, the qualities of a dray-horse were
combined with those of a fox. He often undertook, at Lenin's
request, delicate missions without appearing to bother much
with their purpose and, still less, their justification. Since Lenin
must have wanted to place one of his own men in Helphand's
organization, Frstenberg would be the obvious choice. We have,
in fact, every reason to assume that Frstenberg joined Helphand
with Lenin's consent. The Bolshevik leader had an accurate eye
for the characters of his comrades, and an infinite patience with
the details of organization. We have seen that he advised Bukharin
against joining Helphand's institute: he knew that an intellectual
like Bukharin would be useless for the purpose of keeping a
check on Helphand's activities. Lenin then forbade his other
agent in Scandinavia, Alexander Shlyapnikov, to enter into any
contact with Frstenberg. Shlyapnikov was an honourable, incorruptible party worker who disapproved even of the little he
knew of Frstenberg's activities. 'Lenin', Shlyapnikov wrote in his
memoirs, 'warned me against relations with Hanecki and others,
who were mixing business with politics.'21 It was, however, the
same Hanecki whom Lenin called, in the spring of 1917, a
20
21
Z. Hglund, Frn Branting till Lenin, Stockholm, 1953, p. 157.

A. Shlyapnikov, Kanun Semnadtsatovo Goda, Moscow, 1923, Part II, vol. 4, pp. 297-8.
163
'reliable and clever chap'.22 If, in 1915, Lenin seconded Hanecki

to work in Helphand's organization, both parties were well
served: Lenin could be kept informed about the progress of work
in Scandinavia, while Helphand had in Frstenberg a most
suitable connexion with the Bolshevik headquarters.
Finally, it is likely that Kozlovsky, a lawyer from St. Petersburg and originally a member of the Polish Social Democrat
party, was also willing to co-operate with Helphand. This
connexion was revealed only in July 1917, when Kozlovsky,
together with Lenin and others, was charged by the Russian
provisional Government with diverting German money to the
Bolshevik party coffers. Very little, unfortunately, is known about
Kozlovsky's wartime activities; one fact is, however, common to
all the memoirs by his contemporaries: Kozlovsky often travelled
between Stockholm and St. Petersburg on unexplained and secret
missions. There were other people who worked for Helphand.
They were occasional revolutionaries, adventurers, and other
representatives of the wartime demi-monde, whose undecipherable
pseudonyms and Christian names have come down to us in
official records, bearing witness to their owners' obscurity.
Helphand kept away from the diplomats while he was building
up his revolutionary organization. Only when it was well advanced
on the way to operational order, did he let them know more about
his activities. At the beginning of August, his friend from Constantinople, Dr. Zimmer, arrived in Copenhagen to make inquiries
on behalf of the Foreign Ministry. He was able to find out quite a
lot.23 When Zimmer visited him, Helphand showed his concern
with the press campaign against him in the Entente countries
as well as in the Russian migr circles. He complained that
because of it, two of his assistants had declined to go on working
for him. Helphand thought that his visits to the Berlin ministries
might have been noticed, or that the German Government
security was not tight enough. He recommended that the
Foreign Ministry's reply to these rumours should be that he had
merely 'been advising on economic questions in Turkey'.
22
23
Lenin, Sochineniya, vol. XX, p. 55, letter to Hanecki 17/30 March 1917.
AA, 'Bericht ber den Stand der Arbeiten des Herrn Dr. Helphand', 6 August 1915.
Akten der Gesandtschaft Kopenhagen, file 'Helphand'.
164
Zimmer was able to find out for himself that the speculations
of the Russian migr press on Helphand's Copenhagen institute
that it concealed the headquarters of a conspiracywere quite
wrong. Helphand had used it as a decoy during his recruitment
drive; although the institute existed, it was merely what it
purported to be: a research organization. Revolutionary conspiracy was also being taken care of, but under an entirely
different front.
From every point of view, a business company was much more
suitable than a research institute for Helphand's purposes.
Despite the war, trade between Germany and Russia was still
going onbetween August 1915 and July 1916 it amounted
to 11,220,000 roublesand it passed, legally or illegally, through
Scandinavia. Since wartime trade regulations in Russia were not
very restrictive, and Helphand was able to obtain special import
and export licences from the German authorities, he was in a
position to build up a trading-cum-revolutionary organization in
Russia.
The company Helphand set up in Copenhagen judiciously
mixed politics with business; it ran its own network of agents,
who travelled between Russia and Scandinavia. Apart from
looking after business interests, they maintained contact with the
various underground cells and strike committees, trying to coordinate them into a unitary movement. Zimmer described their
activities in the following manner:
The organization created by Parvus is now employing 8 people in
Copenhagen and about 10 who travel in Russia. This work serves the
purpose of contacting various personalities in Russia, as it is necessary
to bring together the various disjointed movements. The centre in
Copenhagen maintains an uninterrupted correspondence with the
connexions made by the agents. Parvus has set aside a fund to cover the
administrative costs of the organization, which is used very thriftily.
Till now it has been possible to run the whole affair so discreetly, that
not even the gentlemen who work for this organization have realized
that our government is behind it all. It has already been noticed that
Parvus spends much money on behalf of the party. This can be disguised when the export firm, connected with the bureau, does some
165
business. In this respect I have discussed various suggestions with

Dr. Helphand.24
It was the only company in the Russian revolutionary business.

Lenin, Zimmer knew, was still inactive and could do very little
because he had no money. There was, however, nothing against
supporting him when the 'existing tension [i.e. with Helphand]
has abated'. In the meantime, however, Helphand was well ahead.
His business representatives were able to cover the whole of
Russia, and the dealings of the export-import enterprise soon
provided a channel for money through which German subsidies
for the revolutionary movement could be pumped. Such a channel
was beyond control by the Russian authorities. Helphand could,
for instance, use German official money to purchase goods in the
West for sale to Russia: political money was thus neutralized into
current business income, which was used on the spot for
revolutionary activities. Imports from Russia for the German war
industry could be highly profitable; some of the profits were then
distributed among the 'businessmen', and others ploughed back
into purchasing goods for export in Russia, and so on. A member
of the Austro-Hungarian legation in Stockholm later summed up
the whole business in the following manner:
It is quite certain that, during the war, Helphand and Frstenberg
could, and did carry on, with German help, an export business through
Scandinavia to Russia. . . . This import of German goods to Russia
was undertaken regularly and in considerable volume by the Helphand-Frstenberg enterprise, in the following manner: Helphand
received from the Germans certain goods such as surgical instruments,
medicines, and chemicals, needed in Russia, and then Frstenberg, as
his Russian agent, shipped them to Russia. The cost of these goods was
not paid back to Germany, but, since the outbreak of the Russian
revolution, it was mainly used for Lenin's propaganda.25
It was useful business experience which stood Jakob Frstenberg

in good stead when he became, after the Bolshevik revolution, the
head of the Soviet National Bank.
24
25
ibid.
H. Grebing, 'So macht man Revolution', in Politische Studien, Munich, 1957, p. 234.
M.R.-M
166
Zimmer was very impressed by what he found in Copenhagen,

and he suggested that the German legation should from now on
keep in touch with Helphand. In the following years, Count
Brockdorff-Rantzau, the Minister to Copenhagen, became closely
connected with Helphand's revolutionary activities. Their first
meeting took place at the end of July 1915; a fortnight later
Rantzau wrote: 'I have now got to know Helphand better, and I
think that there can be no question that he is an extraordinarily
important man whose unusual powers I feel we must employ
for the duration of the war and should, if at all possible, continue to use later onwhether we personally agree with his
convictions or not.'26
On the surface, the two men did not have much in common.
Helphand was a wandering Jew, a socialist with a taste for
flamboyant good living, a taste he had only recently been able to
indulge. Brockdorff-Rantzau, on the other hand, was an overcivilized grand-seigneur, icily reserved, self-controlled, elaborately
polite. Helphand's retinue of women would have appealed to
him not at all. His career in the Foreign Ministry had progressed
swiftly and successfully. After a number of appointments abroad
the stay in St. Petersburg between the years 1897 and 1901 had
awakened his keen and lasting interest in Russiahe was
appointed Minister to Copenhagen in 1912, when he was fortytwo years old. He did not, however, fit the accepted picture of
an Imperial German diplomat. The Rantzau family was neither
Prussian nor Junker. They were an old-established Holstein
comital family, connected with the Danish royal house. His
politics were marked by a strong liberal streak; during the war
he assumed a benevolent attitude towards the German Social
Democrat party.
Brockdorff-Rantzau knew no prejudice when concrete political
aims were at stake: he was quite able to set aside the predilections
of his class. He was ambitious, for himself and for his country, and
it was this ambition that made it possible for him to deal, when
necessary, with the devil himself. But he was reserved, and he
found it difficult to establish human contact. He would receive
visitors and discuss politics only late at night; for then, he was
26
Zeman, op. cit., document No. 5.
167
able to show a certain amount of 'bluff openness', especially

towards those men who, by day, usually did not move in the same
social circles as he himself. Towards Helphand, Rantzau showed
no personal or political prejudice. Their relationship grew out
of the formal framework of political co-operation: obsession with
Russia's defeat, and their conviction that a revolution in St.
Petersburg was the surest way of achieving it, created a community of interest between the two men. Rantzau saw Helphand
as an expert on revolutions, whose advice he readily accepted.
Yet there existed between them an understanding, even sympathy. Helphand could be a very pleasant and witty companion;
his untrammelled vigour, his frivolous Bohemian existence,
appealed to Rantzau. Neither of the two men could be measured
against a conventional yardstick; their mutual tolerance made the
smooth development of their relationship possible.
In Brockdorff-Rantzau, Helphand acquired a powerful ally
among the diplomats, the best liaison with the Foreign Ministry
he could have wished for. In their first conversation at the
beginning of August, Helphand tried hard to safeguard his
revolutionary policy against the threat of a separate peace with
Russia. With uncanny perception, he felt that Berlin was still
toying with the idea of a separate peace: his suspicions were in
fact justified. He told Rantzau that he regarded a revolution in
Russia as 'inevitable'. According to the latest information at his
disposal, he told the Minister, unrest had already affected the
army and the armaments workers. The position of the Tsar had
been weakened so far that he no longer commanded sufficient
authority to conclude a separate peace with Germany. Again,
Helphand tried to strengthen his arguments by drawing Rantzau's
attention to the problem of the long-term aims in the East: he
knew that his views on the weakening and decentralization of
Russia could make a strong impression in official quarters.
At the same time, Helphand suggested that the over-all military
strategy should be co-ordinated with his revolutionary plans.
Germany had to make quite certain, he argued, that Russia did
not gain control over the Straits. Such a success, he knew full well,
would bring the Tsarist Government a tremendous amount of
prestige at home. The war would be 'lost politically, even if a
168
military victory was won'. The German armies should therefore

concentrate their striking power in South Russia, and thus give
Turkey a military respite; another line of attack should be aimed
at the Donets basin: the occupation of this industrial area would
cut across Russia's main artery.27
Co-operation with the Minister to Copenhagen, as well as the
establishment of the revolutionary headquarters in the Danish
capital, represented, for Helphand, an important advance. One
thing only remained to be done: the publicity campaign directed
at the European socialists. He had placed great value on a guided
press campaign, designed to exploit their traditional aversion to
Tsarism.
When Dr. Zimmer called on him in Copenhagen, Helphand
mentioned to him the fact that he still lacked the 'necessary basis'
for the publicity drive. He told his visitor that he intended to
found his own periodical, to be called Die Glocke. For this project,
too, Rantzau gave his full support. It was essential, he advised
the Under State Secretary, that the Foreign Ministry should
remove all obstacles in the way of the projected journal. It was to
be used not only for the purposes of a revolution in Russia, but
also to lead the German workers to support the state, thus
creating stability and unity within the Reich. 'Otherwise',
Rantzau wrote, 'we shall never achieve the great aim which I have
before my eyes. I have the hope that we shall not only emerge
from this war as the external victors and the greatest power in the
world, but also that, after the tremendous test that the German
workers, indeedto avoid invidious comparisons"the common
man" in particular, have now undergone, we may be able confidently to try to bring those elements to co-operate who, before
the war, stood apart and seemed unreliable, and to group them
around the throne.'28
The day before Rantzau dispatched his confidential letter,
Helphand had lefton 13 Augustfor Berlin. Rantzau had
smoothed the way for him, and he could expect a good reception
in the Foreign Ministry. In addition, recent political and military
27
28
Brockdorff-Rantzau to the Foreign Ministry, telegram No. 1306 of 10 August 1915,

in WK Nr. 2; and a letter to Zimmermann of 13 August, in WK Nr. 11c sec.
169
developments had also gone in Helphand's favour. On 3 August,

Germany's peace feelers to St. Petersburg had finally come to
grief, and the possibility of a separate peace appeared, once
again, remote. On 11 August, Bethmann-Hollweg, the Reich
Chancellor, reported to the Kaiser that the 'pushing back of the
Muscovite Empire to the East by detaching its western territories'
was the central aim of Germany's eastern policy.29 At the same
time, the occupation of Warsaw on 5 August revived the hopes
in Germany of Russia's early breakdown.
Once in Berlin, Helphand soon found out that neither the
Foreign Ministry nor the General Staff had any objections to the
foundation of his journal. The reservations of the Ministry of
the Interior against a socialist publication were easily disposed of,
and Helphand was allowed to address public opinion direct. His
task now was to warn European socialists against the Tsarist
regime, and to begin preparations for a political mass strike in
Russia. The date for the outbreak of the strikethe fuse which
was to set off the revolutionHelphand had fixed for 22 January
1916. He had only five months in which to accomplish his selfimposed and gigantic task.
29
F. Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht, Dsseldorf, 1961, p. 238.
8
Not by Money Alone
The publication of his own socialist newspaper was the
dream of Helphand's life. Ever since the time of the revisionist
controversy in the eighteen-nineties Helphand had suffered, in
one way or another, at the hands of the editors of the German
socialist press: he developed a desire to be financially and politically independent of them. Now he was rich, and the dream was
going to come true, at whatever price.
From August 1915 Helphand concentrated on launching Die
Glocke'The Bell', a name evocative of Alexander Herzen's
Russian radical magazine Kolokolas early as possible. Helphand
had good reasons for speedy publication. Since November 1914,
Liebknecht and the left wing of the party had been expounding
the thesis that Germany had successfully defended herself against
the enemy attack, but that she was now carrying on the war
purely out of a desire for territorial gain. Helphand thought this
was a dangerously sentimental view of the situation, since it
portrayed Russia as a defeated power, and thus threatened to
undermine the fighting spirit of the proletarian masses. Helphand
was also motivated by journalistic as well as political considerations. Karl Kautsky was opposed to the war, and he took the
Neue Zeit with him: there was now a void in the party publicity,
which Helphand intended to fill with his new magazine. Among
the leading dailies, Vorwrts and the Leipziger Volkszeitung
followed the Kautsky line, and the party leadership had to fall
back on the support of two small provincial newspapers, the
Hamburger Echo and the Chemnitzer Volkstimme.
Helphand had embarked on the first technical preparations for
Die Glocke some time before he officially informed the Foreign
Ministry of his intentions to start publishing it. He was attracted
to Munich as a possible location for the editorial offices: military
Not by Money Alone 171
censorship in Bavaria was less severe than that imposed in the

other federal states. He could also rely on the help there of Adolf
Mller, the editor-in-chief of the Mnchener Post, who had been
a friend of his since the turn of the century.
Adolf Mller, the son of a middle-class Catholic family in the
Rhineland, joined the Social Democrat party about the year 1890,
having studied medicine and political economy. In 1893, partly
on the recommendation of Christo Rakovsky, he was entrusted
with the editorship of the Mnchener Post. His was an easygoing and conciliatory disposition, and he had little interest in the
subtleties of Marxist dogma: he was able to remain aloof from
the theoretical discussions which, from time to time, threatened the
unity of the party. His attitude to the war was that of a patriotic
politician, and he was able to give Helphand's public stand his
full approval.
As early as May 1915 Helphand had got in touch, through
Mller's good services, with the printers of the Mnchener Post,
and he acquired a majority interest in the shares of the company.
He also wanted to own the company that published his magazine,
and for this purpose he founded, at the beginning of July, the
Verlag fr Sozialwissenschaft in Munich. He then appointed
Louis Cohn, the business manager of the Post, to direct the new
enterprise. It was some time before Cohn acquired editorial and
administrative staff: at first, he had to do most of the work for
Die Glocke himself. Helphand was, however, convinced that his
strong financial backing would tide the magazine over its teething
troubles: he could afford costly improvisation in the production
of the first numbers. He did not hesitate to waive all financial
considerations in order to have the magazine exactly as he wanted
it. On business grounds, Cohn opposed any mention of the
political commitment of the magazine on its title page; Helphand
insisted that the sub-title of Die Glocke should be 'A Socialist
Bi-Monthly'Sozialistische Halbmonatschrift. 'I am not afraid of
boycott9, Helphand wrote to Cohn in the middle of August. 'It
will not be as bad as you appear to think. In any caseI will
not give way.'1
After feverish activity, the first number of Die Glocke finally
1
Nachlass Helphand, Rep. 92, letter from Helphand to Cohn, 12 August 1915.
172
appeared in September 1915. In a special introduction, Helphand

explained the aims of the new periodical. It would not, he wrote
with self-confidence, 'pander to the public'; its task was to discuss
the political and social problems which had been raised by the
war, as well as to explore the ways in which a new political order
could be established after its conclusion. At the same time, it was
intended to awake the intellectual interest of the workers, and to
integrate them into the cultural life of the nation. This consciousness of having a cultural mission to fulfil among the workers
in fact set the tone of Die Glocke until its demise in 1925: the
magazine became popular especially among the party educational
functionaries and among socialist schoolteachers.
The first number of Die Glocke contained nothing but contributions from its publisher. In addition to a lengthy essay on the
history and the present position of the German socialist party, a
shorter piece concerned itself with social conditions in Russia and
the prospects of the further development of the war. Helphand
had not dropped his old habit of writing, and it was now clearly
marked with signs of compromise with the powers that be. He
of course had good reasons for wanting to retain the goodwill
of the Foreign Ministry, and he needed the co-operation of the
diplomats in order to beat the military censorship. Anyway, he
was not the kind of man who could be expected to forgo the
privilege of having his manuscripts forwarded to Munich in
diplomatic bags.
Nevertheless, his long essay on the Social Democrat party
was anything but a patriotic declaration or a renunciation of the
revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. It glorified the party as a
model for the international workers' movement, and was a critical
survey of the credit and debit side of the work accomplished in
Germany. It was in fact a manifesto similar to Trotsky's study
Itogy i perspektivy, a distillation of the sum total of Helphand's
theoretical work. It certainly contained sharp criticism of the
German party, but not the kind of criticism a renegade would
have made. When Helphand rebuked the party, it was for its
revolutionary barrenness. Earlier, his criticism had concerned
individual cases and not general themes: now, the stones he had
kept on throwing at the party glass-houses since the agrarian
debate in 1895 were picked up, and used for laying the foundations of a neat little building.
In Helphand's opinion, Marx's revolutionary teaching had been
watered down in Germany. The dull arch-vulgarizer, Karl
Kautsky, had achieved nothing but corruption of Marx's doctrine.
Had the socialists listened to Helphand, they would have won one
position after another in a continuous struggle against capitalism:
Bebel's defensive tactics, based on nonsensical illusions about the
automatic breakdown of capitalism, had neither forced a revolution, nor prevented the war. German Social Democracy therefore
bore 'great political guilt'. 'But it was not a temporary guilt, nor
one which originated in a passing mood; it was the outcome of
wrong tactics, employed for 25 years, which could not be changed
at the critical moment: a guilt which accumulated through the
decades.'2
In this criticism there was much of the 'old' pre-war Helphand: the active, trouble-shooting revolutionary, whom Trotsky
had already pronounced dead in the spring of 1915. But what was
the situation as far as the 'new' Helphand was concernedif such
a person existed at all?
He came out in defence of those socialists who had given
support to the Government when war was declared; he regarded
the German General Staff as the protector of the interests of the
proletariat in the struggle against Tsarism; he vigorously defended
the war policy of the Government against the criticism of the
left-wing party group around Liebknecht and Luxemburg. But
he did not for a moment lose sight of the interests and the future
of socialism, and of the German movement in particular. He
thought of it as the 'stronghold' of the European movement,
which, if it fell, would bring socialism everywhere crashing down.
If, however, it were victorious in Germany, then the battle in
the whole of Europe would be won. The way to socialist victory
led, Helphand never wearied of stressing, through Germany's
defiance of the Tsarist threat.
In this situation, the proletariat would gain nothing if it
maintained a negative and passive attitude. The sacrifice of
'blood and suffering should not be made for nothing'. The party
2
Die Glocke, 1915, p. 41.
174
must now free itself from the 'lunacy' of men like Kautsky and
Bernstein, who had demonstrated for peace without being able
to conclude the war. The middle class, Helphand warned, should
not entertain any illusions that the war would rid them of the
socialist threat. On the contrary, the workers would return from
the trenches with a new readiness to fight. The war was teaching
them a 'new daring, a new initiative, and a new keenness of
resolution', all the qualities they had not been able to learn from
parliamentary practice. The 'new' Helphand was in fact already
announcing that the civil truce would end, the day the peace was
signed; there were more violent struggles ahead.
It was not the kind of writing the German Government would
have welcomed without reservations: no rebuke from the Foreign
Ministry was, however, forthcoming. The high government
officials in fact proved themselves quite broadminded; they had
accepted Helphand, they had taken the point in his plans, and
they refrained from irritating him with petty restrictions. Anyway, they were glad of additional socialist propaganda in favour
of Germany's war policy, and in this respect Helphand never
failed them. The war, he repeatedly hammered into his readers,
was a defensive war against Tsarist absolutism.
In the third issue of Die Glocke, Helphand concentrated on
countering the recent attacks and slanders of his enemies. The
two articles3 were good specimens of his many personal polemics
to come. He developed a technique for dealing with such controversies. In this instance, he glossed over the gravest charge
against himselfthat he was working as an agent of the German
Government, and that his war policies were in complete harmony
with those of the Government. He made not a single reference to
his relations with the Berlin officials. Instead, Helphand closely
examined the half-truths and faulty information produced by his
opponents, in order to demolish, by employing semi-proofs and
semi-denials, the whole structure of their accusations. He did
not tell the whole truth: he evaded the core of the controversy,
and he drew quite as misleading a picture of his activities as had
his accusers.
3
'Offener Brief an die Zeitung Nasche Slowo', and 'Ein Verleumdungswerk', Die
Glocke, 1915, pp. 117-32 and 155-62.
Helphand described the suggestion that he had officially

worked for the Young Turks as a 'low-down, filthy libel'. In
regard to the Ukrainian Union he admitted his friendship with
Marian Melenevski, but he insisted that he had 'no connexion'
with the Union itself. The assertion that he was attempting to
incite a revolution in Russia while in the pay of the Turkish and
the Austrian Governments was quite easy to deal with. In
Helphand's view, it had a farmyard quality about it, like the
'excrement of a stinking beast'.
Certainly, he was not in Austrian services. But what of his
co-operation with the German Government? He found a way
round this point. He took up the challenge and openly stated
his aims, speaking of his mission with pathos: 'This mission is
to create a spiritual link between the armed German and the
revolutionary Russian proletariat.' The adjective 'spiritual' was,
of course, a wild euphemism, a propaganda device for drawing a
veil across the solid fact that he was mediating between the
German Government and the revolutionary movement in Russia.
But it was far from impossible to understand the real meaning of
the statement. Helphand could not have been more outspoken
without severely endangering the success of his work.
Only after he had discharged his duties to the socialist movement and to himself, as a writer, was Helphand ready to hand
over the direction of his paper to an independent editorial staff.
From the beginning of October 1915, Konrad Haenisch, who
had greeted Helphand's first article with boundless enthusiasm,
began to act as the editor-in-chief. A group of patriotic comrades
formed around him: among them, Paul Lensch, Eduard David,
Heinrich Cunow, Ernst Heilmann, and Wilhelm Jansson were
prominent. With them, Helphand acquired the co-operation of
the most effective publicists of the policy of the majority party.
It was a mixed group. Like Haenisch, Paul Lensch originally
came from the radical wing of the party. As a member of the
editorial staff of the Leipziger Volkszeitung, he had established
himself as an energetic and effective journalist. After some hesitation during the voting on war credits in the Reichstag, he confidently transferred his allegiance to those men who upheld the
thesis of the revolutionary effects of the war. Eduard David had
176
taught German and history at a grammar school in the Rhineland;

at the turn of the century, he was to be found among the leading
exponents of socialist revisionism. His talent was dry and didactic: his arguments were always considered and individual. He
secured for himself an influential position on the editorial board
of Die Glocke, as well as in the party itself. Heinrich Cunow had
enjoyed a high reputation in the party as an economist and
ethnologist; for several decades he had been an important
contributor to the Neue Zeit. He was a sober politician: after
August 1914 he made an attempt to guide the Neue Zeit on the
lines set down by the party leadership, and against Karl Kautsky's
wishes. After a time, he dropped the arguments with Kautsky
and decided to use instead the new Helphand publication as an
outlet for his writing.
Heilmann and Jansson represented the more practical side of
socialist politics. As a radical in Saxony, Heilmann had earned
the nickname Ruberrimus, but he grew, however, considerably
paler after the outbreak of the war. He became one of the most
extreme of the socialist patriots, identifying himself completely
and uncritically with the policies of the German Imperial
Government. Wilhelm Jansson provided a link between the
editorial board of Die Glocke and the trade union movement. A
Swede by birth, he had become completely integrated into the
German party, so much so that he became a partisan of the idea of
a socialist Germany's hegemony in Europe.
Such company was not always to Helphand's liking. In the
following years, the editorial board of the magazine did not
always pursue a policy of which Helphand could wholeheartedly
approve. Paul Lensch's anti-British campaign, and Haenisch's
jingoist predilections sometimes occasioned the publisher of Die
Glocke to point at certain differences of opinion. Shortly before

the end of the war, Helphand described his relations with these
men in the following manner:
I founded Die Glocke in 1915 as a free socialist platform. Its editorial
board was and is directed entirely independently by Haenisch and a
board of his assistants. I myself figured only as the publisher. When the
newspaper was founded, I did not think that the war would go on for

such a long time, and I intended to raise the major problems of economic
transformation after the war. But the war went on, and it pushed our
interest in its aftermath into the background. Pressure of circumstance
made it necessary for us to occupy ourselves with the problems of the war.
The general line of the newspaper corresponded to my views on the
necessity of concluding the war victoriously: in this connexion it was
impossible to avoid the confusion of arguments by individual authors,
a confusion that arose in socialist circles under the influence of the
war. . . . Had I been editing the newspaper myself, I should have tried
to exercise a wholesome restraint on the too violently nationalist authors.4
Despite the differences, Helphand gave the editorial board a

free rein: he was quite content to have at his disposal an independent means of communication with the public, which he could
use when the need arose. He was rich enough to afford the luxury
of his own journal which, even if it did not always correspond to
his views, at least bore his name. He could console himself with
the thought that he was doing better than Kautsky, whose journal
appeared once a month only. Die Glocke filled an empty space in
German socialist publicity, and it made some contribution towards the consolidation of the party after the rift caused by the
war. It also served as a public front for Helphand's activities in
regard to Russia; it failed, however, to set off an international
propaganda campaign against Tsarism. It was, essentially, a
prestige undertaking: this may well have made the thought of a
large financial loss bearable for Helphand.
The sharpest criticism of Die Glocke came, at its first appearance, from the circles of the socialist opponents of the war. Karl
Kautsky spoke contemptuously of the Glockner (the bell-ringers)
of the 'imperial Falstaff', Helphand; Franz Mehring made a
scathing reference to 6the little bell of the poor sinners, which
Parvus-Helphand smelted, and which Parvulus-Haenisch is
pulling'. Rosa Luxemburg's reaction was more to the point. With
remarkable insight, she recognized at once that the aim of Die
Glocke was to propagate the idea of the revolution in Russia. She
addressed Helphand directly on this point: at no other time did
her intelligence suffer so much by her aversion to Prussia, than
4
178
on this question of the revolutionary effects of a German victory

over Tsarism. 'Anyway,' she wrote, 'it is to be feared that the
cause of the revolution in Russia will be obstructed by the war.'
When she came to contrast Helphand's claim that, by establishing
a spiritual link between the armed German and the revolutionary
Russian workers he was fulfilling an important mission, with the
fact that he was making a fortune in the security of Denmark,
Rosa Luxemburg could, she admitted, no longer understand
anything at all.5
The appearance of Die Glocke finally moved Lenin to make a
public pronouncement on the subject of Helphand. In his
Sotsial-Democrat he described Helphand's periodical as an
'organ of renegades and dirty lackeys', surrounding the 'cesspool of German chauvinism', in which 'not a single honest
thought, not a single serious argument, not a single straightforward article' could be found. Helphand's declaration that he
had a mission to fulfil in connexion with the revolution in Russia,
Lenin described as a 'bad joke'.6
Lenin's article against Die Glocke has since been used by the
Bolshevik publicists as the ultimate proof that there existed no
connexion between their party and Helphand. They should have
known better. Lenin's characteristic use of the abstract concept,
tempered by bad language, was in the accepted socialist convention of full-blown journalistic invective; it was a part of
the game. What is more significant is that even on this occasion
Lenin refrained from describing Helphand as an agent of the
German Government; the article did not contain a single reference to their meeting in May. It in fact did not eliminate the
possibility, however remote it may have appeared at the time, of
using Helphand's services if the occasion should arise.
Lenin may have thought it politically expedient to dissociate
himself publicly from Helphand without making a clean break.
The tacit agreement about Jakob Frstenberg's role as Helphand's assistant and as Lenin's confidential agent, was in no way
affected by Lenin's criticism of Die Glocke. Finally, the Bolshevik
5
Spartakusbltter, No. 10, reprinted in Spartakusbriefe, ed. by Dr. H. Kolbe, Berlin,

1958, p. 68.
No. 48, 20 November 1915.
leader was right not to underestimate the steps Helphand had

taken towards the revolution.
Although in August and in September the work connected with
the publication of Die Glocke proved to be time-consuming,
Helphand did not neglect the developments in Russia. Through
the regular consultations with Brockdorff-Rantzau, his views
reached the Chancellor, or at least the highest officials in the
Foreign Ministry. And as soon as Die Glocke was securely established, Helphand returned to the final preparations for the strike
in Russia. He anticipated that it would take place in January 1916.
The following weeks were decisive for the success of Helphand's project. He was working with his revolutionary-business
organization in Copenhagen, completely absorbed by the formidable task. He even neglected Brockdorff-Rantzau: he made no
appearance at the German Legation for several weeks. Towards
the end of November, one of Helphand's agents returned from
St. Petersburg; on 2 November, Helphand told Rantzau the news
he had had from Russia.
He reported on the low state of the Russian Army's morale,
which remained unrelieved when the Tsar himself took over the
high command. The situation in the hinterland was also on the
down grade: starvation was expected to hit St. Petersburg and
Moscow during the winter. One piece of information did, however, disturb the Minister. Helphand told him that the Russian
Army would not be ready for revolution until the war was concluded. Helphand tried to allay the Minister's concern by hinting
at the various local mutinies that had affected the army, and by
saying that the 'revolutionary organizations' of the proletariat
were much more important. They were now so strong that he
'stuck to his view and regarded revolution as inevitable'.7
Nevertheless, the Minister's doubts prompted Helphand to
describe the 'revolutionary organizations' in some detail. He disliked doing this, but he trusted Rantzau more than the other
diplomats, and in any case he now needed their support more than
ever. After pointing out that the information was 'strictly secret',
he told Rantzau that 'certainly 100,000 men' could be called out
7
Brockdorff-Rantzau to the Foreign Ministry, telegram No. 1932, 21 November 1915,

WK 11c sec.
180
on strike in St. Petersburg at twenty-four hours' notice. Only

eight days before, a meeting of all the organized workers had
taken place and a three-day strike had been decided upon in
order to assess the forces which would be available for a general
strike. Helphand once again stressed his conviction that it would
take place on 22 January, the anniversary of the 'Bloody Sunday'
of 1905. He added, however, that better co-ordination of the
various organizations, and the establishment of connexions between them and the army, still remained to be accomplished.8
Helphand told Rantzau this much and no more: it was a very
brief account of the arrangements he was then making. We have
already seen that in Copenhagen, Helphand had succeeded in
securing the co-operation of Frstenberg, Uritsky, and Kozlovsky; he was now also in touch with Zurabov, a contributor to
the newspaper Nashe Slovo. All these men were experienced
underground workers; they had a variety of contacts in Russia,
with local strike committees, independent revolutionary cells, or
simply with like-minded individual revolutionaries. In addition,
it is possible that Helphand was in touch, through Uritsky, with
the Mezhrayontsy, a socialist group in St. Petersburg. Uritsky and
another friend of Helphand's, Ryazanov, were among its leading
members; it was the same group which Trotsky, after his return
to Russia from America in 1917, joined and then later in the
same year took with him into the Bolshevik party.
Helphand did not tell Rantzau of his reverses. Another attempt
to secure the co-operation of Bukharin failed; so did an offer,
backed 6by a few hundred thousand roubles', to persuade
Gurevich-Smirnov, a revolutionary journalist who lived in St.
Petersburg, to found a newspaper. It was Kozlovsky who, during
one of his frequent trips to the Russian capital, made the proposal
to Smirnov. The journalist was, however, puzzled by the strange
form in which the offer was made, as well as by the high subsidy
which accompanied it. Smirnov's suspicion that the proposal
involved political money from Germany was aroused. He declined
the offer, adding that he was rather short of time.9 Another
8
Telegram No. 1943, continuation of telegram No. 1932, in WK 11c sec.

Cf. Smirnov's report of the incident in Zolotoi nemetskii klyuch, by P. S. Melgunov,
Paris, 1940, p. 137.
attempt to establish a connexion in St. Petersburg was made by

Helphand together with Uritsky and Kruse, the Danish journalist. On his trip to Russia, Kruse was to get in touch with a
certain Buchspan, a high official in the Russian Ministry of Trade;
according to Kruse, the attempt failed.10
The Bolshevik groups in Russia took no part in Helphand's
activities. Their co-operation depended on Lenin's consent, and
their leader had never given this. Anyway, the Bolshevik underground organization was so weakened by the war that it was
hardly in a position to take effective action. Their St. Petersburg
committee, for instance, never had more than eight to ten members, and its influence was severely limited. Apart from police
supervision, they had to struggle against the enmity of those
Mensheviks who approved of the war.11 Alexander Shlyapnikov,
who supervised the Bolshevik organization on Lenin's behalf, has
emphatically denied the suspicions that the Bolsheviks cooperated with Helphand at this point of the war.
It is impossible to doubt his statement. Had they agreed to
co-operate, the Bolsheviks would have been much better off than
they were. Neither their central committee in Switzerland, nor
the bureau in St. Petersburg, had even the most basic financial
means at their disposal: at the time of Helphand's briskest
activity in Russia, in the middle of December 1915, Lenin wrote
to Alexandra Kollontay in Scandinavia: 'No money. There is no
money here. That is the main trouble.'12
Such cares Helphand did not have. The Foreign Ministry and,
if need be, he himself, were good providers. He did, however,
have to keep an eye on the diplomats, to maintain their interest in
the revolution in Russia, and to convince them that attempts at
achieving a separate peace with the Tsar were futile. Especially
then, when the strikes in Russia were imminent, Helphand
wanted to make quite sure that no unexpected agreement between the German Government and the Tsar would ruin his plans.
On 30 November 1915, Helphand gave Rantzau a memorandum which examined the problem of peace, while making
10
11
12
Cf. M. Futrell, Northern Underground, London, 1963, pp. 173-4.

A. Shlyapnikov, Kanun Semnadtsatovo Goda, vol. 2, p. 100.
Gankin and Fisher, The Bolsheviks and the World War, London, 1940, p. 280.
M.R.-N
182
additional suggestions as to the ways in which a revolutionary
situation in Russia could be precipitated. He warned the German

Government against a deal with the Tsarist regime. He claimed
that it no longer commanded the necessary authority: if the Tsar
concluded a peace with Germany, it could then be expected that
a reactionary government would come into power. It would have
a 'heavy nationalist coat of paint', and it would not feel itself
bound by the Tsar's undertakings. With financial backing by the
Entente, it would attempt, Helphand argued, to circumvent the

contract made by the Tsar: Germany would thus be deprived of
the 'political results of her own achievements on the battlefield'.13
An agreement with the Tsar might therefore conclude the war,
but it could not establish a peace. 'Russia has already reached
such a stage of political development that a secure peace with this
country is impossible as long as the contracting government does
not enjoy the confidence of the people.'
If, on the other hand, Germany did not conclude peace with
the Tsar, peace would then become the general slogan of the
revolutionary movement. Helphand added that the desire for
peace, combined with extreme material privations, would give the
impetus to revolution. For a government which achieved power
in this way, the first problem would be to put an end to the
hostilities and to offer immediate peace. And since the leaders of

the revolution could place the whole blame for the war squarely
on the shoulders of the late government, it should be much easier
for them to make considerable concessions to Germany in the

peace treaty. Peace would then be the fulfilment of the wishes of
the whole nation, and it would have strong popular backing.
Helphand was convinced that the situation was quite ripe for
the emergence of the government he had in mind. 'The revolutionary organizations are now stronger in Russia and more
resolute than they were before the outbreak of the general strike
in 1905. The bitterness which has spread among the masses
cannot be compared with that in the year 1905, and the army has
taken up an anti-government position. Only the last inclinations

towards inertia and apathy remain to be overcome, as always is
the case with great mass movements.' Helphand believed that in
13
ber die Mglichkeit der Revolutionierung Russlands, WK 11c sec.
the stormy atmosphere of Russia, highly susceptible to influence

from abroad, the developments on the eastern front were of firstrate importance: he was certain that the capture of Riga and of
Dnaburg would make a profound impression in Russia, destroying her last faint hopes of victory.
He then proposed certain financial measures which would
open up another way for effective intervention from the outside.
This was an inexpensive measure against the Russian money
market, a measure which would push the value of the rouble still
lower, and which would undermine the confidence of the Russian
people in their currency. Should it be possible to demonstrate,
Helphand wrote, that two sets of notes with the same serial
numbers were in circulation, a panic would be created in Russia
which would have the most harmful effect on the country's credit
position abroad. It would not be difficult, Helphand implied, to
introduce forged currency into the Russian market. Finally, he
recommended a concentrated propaganda campaign in the Russian Army. It would have to take a form tailored to fit the circumstances, and not just that of anonymous leaflets. Helphand
thought the German Social Democrat party and the trade unions
were the most suitable organizations for the conduct of such a
campaign, which should respect national feelings and avoid
making a direct appeal to the troops to lay down their arms. 'The
main thing', Helphand concluded, 'is to stimulate the revolutionary mood. All this will have to be tackled vigorously, as
according to every expectation, the revolutionary events will be
concentrated around 22 January.'
Brockdorff-Rantzau sent Helphand's memorandum to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, together with his own covering letter,
noting that the memorandum was written on 'the basis of the
secret reports of his confidential agent who has arrived here from
St. Petersburg'.14 He went on to say that 'although, as with all
such projects, we have no means of knowing that this plan will
definitely succeed, Helphand's political past and especially the
role he played in the revolution of 1905, give us a certain guarantee that his suggestions have some prospect of success; at any
14
The Minister to Copenhagen to the Chancellor, Report No. 43, of 30 November 1915,
in WK 11c sec.
184
rate they arecompared with the vague views about the Russian
revolutionary problem commonly in circulationpositive, and
perhaps promise to bring about a solution of the question, which
in favourable circumstances would be more radical than any
solution we have contemplated. . . .'
The Foreign Ministry's immediate decision to invite Helphand
to Berlin was doubtless made on the basis of Rantzau's recommendations. The Minister to Copenhagen did everything to move
the Foreign Ministry from its reserve, and to get its full support
for Helphand's plans. Through his cousin, Counsellor Langwerth von Simmern, he even tried to arrange an audience for
Helphand with the Reich Chancellor. For some members of the
Foreign Ministry, this was going too far: Diego von Bergen, the
reticent influential Minister in the Wilhelmstrasse, who dealt
mainly with subversion in Russia, thought that people like
Helphand were not fit to be admitted to the highest councils of
the state.
Between 16 and 20 December, Helphand spent a few days in
Berlin where he discussed his plans in the Foreign Ministry and
in the Treasury. A few difficulties emerged. Whereas the Foreign
Ministry promised support, State Secretary Helfferich in the
Treasury did not bother to conceal his disapproval of Helphand's
monetary schemes. In 1915, no European government could be
expected to take up that kind of suggestion; anyway, Helfferich
was doubtful as to the technical plausibility of the measures
against the rouble, and of the possibility of carrying them out
successfully in haste and in absolute secrecy. Helphand did,
however, take away with him from Berlin the promise that the
German Government would allocate another one million roubles
for propaganda directed against the Russian army.15
Although Helphand did not meet the Chancellor, Rantzau was
doing more than his official duty on Helphand's behalf. On the
day of his departure for Berlin, the Minister to Copenhagen
wrote to Bethmann-Hollweg: at no other time did he make so
determined a bid to influence Germany's eastern policy.16
The Russian Tsar, Brockdorff-Rantzau pointed out, had
15
16
Helfferich to Zimmermann, 12 December and 26 December 1915, in WK 11c sec.

Report No. 470 of 16 December 1915, WK i ic sec.
'assumed a frightful historical guilt and forfeited the right to any

leniency from us': the traditional friendship with the Romanovs
should therefore be given no weight whatever. Rantzau thought
it necessary to attempt the destruction of the remaining feelings
of solidarity between the German and the Russian ruling houses.
The Tsar was a 'weak and insincere ruler', who, 'under the
influence of mystic flagellants dreams of victory over an enemy
who never wanted to start hostilities against him'.
The political proposals put forward by Rantzau revealed the
extent of the influence Helphand exercised over the Minister's
thinking. Separate peace with the Romanovs was out of the
question, because Russia's dynasty was on its way out: only a
revolution could solve the eastern question. The Minister thought
every means justified that secured Germany's position as a great
power, that protected her from exhaustion, that would simply
save her from 'accepting conditions dictated by the Entente' at
the peace negotiations in the future.
Victory and its reward, the first place in the world, will be ours if we
succeed in instigating a revolution in Russia at the right time, thereby
breaking up the Entente. After the conclusion of peace the internal
collapse of Russia would be of little value to us, perhaps even undesirable.
It is certainly true that Dr. Helphand is neither a saint nor a welcome
guest; he believes in his mission, however, and his competence was
tested during the revolution after the Russo-Japanese war. I think we
ought, therefore, to make use of him before it is too late. We should
prepare ourselves for a policy with Russia which our grandchildren
will, one day, call traditional, when, under the leadership of the House
of Hohenzollern, the German nation has established a lasting friendship
with the Russian people.
This goal will not be achieved until the Tsarist Empire is shocked
out of its present condition. Dr. Helphand believes he can show the
way, and he has made positive proposals which are based on twenty
years' experience. In view of the present situation, I believe we must
take the chance. The stakes are certainly high, and success not necessarily certain. Nor do I misjudge the repercussions on our internal
political scene which this step can bring in its wake. If we are able to
186
bring about a final military decision in our favour, this would be by all
means preferable. Otherwise, I am convinced that all that remains is
the attempt at this solution, because our existence as a Great Power is at
stakeperhaps even more.
Brockdorff-Rantzau's striking communication to the Reich

Chancellor clearly defined the scope and the problems of Germany's eastern policy. He was aware of the risks his country was
running, and he did not neglect the possible consequences for
Germany's internal policy of the measures he recommended so
highly. The consequences Helphand was hoping for Rantzau
accepted, perhaps even feared: this was the only important difference between them. Rantzau accepted the risks because, at the
end of 1915, he was certain that victory could no longer be
achieved by conventional military means: he made it quite plain
what kind of a victory he would have preferred. He welcomed
Helphand's co-operation because he saw no other way out.
There can, on the other hand, be no doubt that Rantzau's
willingness to oblige had a profound effect on Helphand. He was
certainly glad of the Minister's benevolence; he may even have
been flattered. It caused him to abandon the caution he had
shown before. When Helphand had written his original March
memorandum for the Foreign Ministry, he had confined himself
to discussing the preparations for a mass strike; with Rantzau
he had talked, during the previous few weeks, about preparations
for a revolution. The two men gave each other far too much encouragement.
The fact that the German Government had shown itself unwilling to give their plans as much support as they demanded,
did not dampen Helphand's enthusiasm. Immediately after his
return to Copenhagen from Berlin, Helphand again requested,
through the Minister, the promised one million roubles.17 He
pointed out that it was absolutely essential that an agent travelling
to Petrograd in the next few days should be given the money in
order to organize, in the last remaining weeks before 22 January,
the connexions between the various revolutionary centres. So
that he should forestall objections, Rantzau added that Helphand
17
Report No. 489 of 21 December 1915, WK 11c sec.
Not by Money Alone
187
did not appear 'to be twisting my arm; his suggestion appears to

have arisen out of the political situation rather than personal
considerations. . . .'
It was in the same conversation that Helphand indicated, for
the first time, that a successful outcome in January was not an
absolute certainty. He indicated that an additional twenty million
roubles were necessary to complete the organization of the
revolution: he was clearly toning down the high expectations
that had recently marked his conversations with the Minister.
Although Helphand still maintained his belief that the revolutionary movement would be set in motion by the events in
January, he added that it would not embrace 'the whole country
at once'. And although he was convinced that, after the initial
revolutionary success, Russia would be unable to regain her
internal peace and stability, he advised the German Government
to prepare itself for another winter campaign, and to put the
measures he had suggested into immediate operation.
Now, at the end of December, Helphand tried to retreat to the
position he had originally held, before he had started talking
about a revolution instead of a general strike. But his attempt to
bring the Foreign Ministry down to earth and to dispel, at the last
moment, any illusions about the great event which was about to
occur in St. Petersburg was doomed to failure. It was he himself
who had nurtured these illusions in the first place. He was now
fighting against his own shadow: Parvus, the revolutionary, was
in danger of being outplayed by Dr. Helphand, the diplomatic
adviser.
He received the million roubles 'for the support of the revolutionary movement in Russia' on 29 December,18 and early in
January 1916 he took it with him to Stockholm. He was more
accessible there to his agents in Russia, and better placed to
observe the development of the strike. On 3 January 1916, he
telegraphed Brockdorff-Rantzau: 'A11 is going as desired.
Expecting reports from St. Petersburg.'19
The strike movement in Russia in January 1916 made a vigorous start. On 11 January, more than 10,000 workers at the 'Naval'
18
19
The Akten der Gesandtschaft Kopenhagen, 'Helphand', contain his handwritten receipt.
loc. cit., telegram No, 24.
188
factory in Nikolaev came out on strike. Although it was ostensibly

motivated by economic grievances, the local police was in no
doubt as to its political motives. The wage demands were pitched
so high that the management could not possibly have satisfied
them. In a police report signed by Rear-Admiral Muraviev and
sent to the Government, it was left an open question 'whether
this political strike is the work of the enemy of the established
order, that is, of the left-wing parties, or whether the enemy of
the state [Germany] had a hand in it'.20 Since every attempt to
bring the strike to an end failed, the Admiralty ordered the
closure of the factory on 23 February. Eleven days after the
Nikolaev workers had downed tools, another 45,000 workers
came out on strike in St. Petersburg, in memory of the events of
the Bloody Sunday in 1905.
The January strikes started unexpectedly and briskly: they
were taken note of by diplomatic observers in the capital, who
regarded them as an early danger signal. There can be no doubt
that Helphand thought them his own achievement. He had put a
special stress on the development of the revolutionary movement
in the harbour towns of South Russia, Odessa and Nikolaev: his
first revolutionary contacts in the war were with these towns; the
date and the course of the strike in the capital also pointed to
Helphand's influence. The workers everywhere were able to
stay away from their factories for a considerable length of time:
Helphand had taken special care that the strike committees should
have sufficient sums at their disposal for the payment of the
rouble equivalent of about 3s. (1916 value) to a worker every day.
The strikes did not, however, spark off a revolution. In the
capital, fewer men were involved than Helphand had anticipated;
the workers in Moscow and in the provinces did not follow their
lead. Helphand was wrong in assuming that he could, in the
course of a few months, convert the volatile mood of discontent
into a revolution; he overestimated the effectiveness of the means
at his disposal. Organization had never been his strong point: he
thought improvisation sufficient if enough money, imagination,
and energy, were used in the process. He fell far short of creating
a comprehensive and disciplined organization capable of leading
20
N. G. Fleer, Rabocheie dvizhenie v gody voiny, Moscow, 1923, p. 247.
a mass movement; he had perhaps failed to see through the

contrived optimism of his paid agents.
He did not, however, consciously mislead the Foreign Ministry.
The diplomats' trust in him, and his reputation as an expert,
would have been too high a price to pay for a confidence trick. He
was not under any pressure to produce tangible results so soon.
He himself was the original source of the high expectations and
hopes, but he made an error of judgement, for which he alone
was responsible.
When Helphand returned to Copenhagen after three weeks'
stay in Stockholm, he tried hard to save his face. In a conversation
with Brockdorff-Rantzau on 23 January, he told the Minister that
they had not really suffered a defeat. He said that his confidential
agents in St. Petersburg had opposedand this sounds quite
possiblehis directive to launch the strike on 22 January. The
situation in the capital had changed considerably: some leading
revolutionaries had been appointed to official positions; the
supply crisis had been temporarily overcome. The leaders of the
organization had therefore decided to postpone the beginning of
the general strike. The organization was, however, still ready for
action: its leaders hoped that they would later be able to bring
'enough people' into the streets, and to maintain control over
their actions.21
Helphand was right in one respect: preparations for a strike
were being made in St. Petersburg at the time. At the beginning
of February the workers at the Putilov factory came out, and the
course of the strike closely resembled the concurrent developments in Nikolaev.22 It is nevertheless doubtful whether there
existed an organization behind the strike capable of bringing, as
Helphand had maintained, 100,000 men into the streets at
twenty-four hours' notice. Helphand himself had come to doubt
its strength. He referred to the organization in order to explain
the failure of the movement; after his talk with BrockdorffRantzau in January, he never mentioned it again.
The Minister transmitted Helphand's explanation to the
Chancellor on the same day, without making his customary comments. The report had a depressing effect in Berlin. The trump
21
Report No. 19 of 23 January 1916, WK 11c sec.
22
N. G. Fleer, op. cit., p. 255.
190
card of the revolution had proved a dud. After the disappointment in January the question whether such a dubious and dangerous weapon was worth toying with had to be re-examined. It was
not surprising that the critics of the revolutionary policy now
found a wider response in Government circles.
State Secretary von Jagow in particular, who, from the outset,
had regarded the revolutionary adventure with the greatest
misgivings, now felt himself vindicated in his political and moral
objections. A descendant of a noble Prussian family, he had
succeeded Kiderlen-Wachter as the head of the Foreign Ministry
at the beginning of 1913. In the company of self-confident politicians and diplomats who never expressed their doubts as to the
certainty of Germany's victory in the war, the sensitive and
critical State Secretary appeared, in the words of a contemporary,
an 'intellectual inclined to scepticism'. His bad health and limited
energy made it difficult for him to assert himself against the more
robust war lords. Jagow was an aristocrat and diplomat of the
traditional school who had no liking for the paraphernalia of
political warfare. He despised all agents, mediators, and political
schemers, whose methods and personalities offended his sense
of propriety and order.
He had observed the unfolding of the revolutionary policy
towards Russia with a great deal of reserve. Helphand he trusted
neither personally nor politically, and, when he had to speak of
him, he did so only in a derisive and sarcastic tone. In Rantzau's
view, the State Secretary used Helphand only to 'sharpen his
tongue on him'. After the January debacle, Jagow's distrust
increased further: he expressed the suspicion that Helphand let
the funds for the revolution flow into his own pocket.
It was mainly due to Jagow's influence that the Foreign
Ministry let itself be discouraged by the initial failure. After
January 1916, the diplomats cut back their revolutionary activities to a minimum. Neither the Minister to Copenhagen nor
Helphand were asked, throughout the year, to organize any
major enterprise of subversion in Russia. Only propaganda work
and the smuggling of defeatist leaflets were carried on, though
without any considerable official subventions. These activities
were assigned no greater importance than the isolated operations
of a handful of Russian and Baltic revolutionaries, which received

occasional support from Gisbert Freiherr von Romberg, the
German Minister to Berne.
As far as the diplomats were concerned, Helphand was banished into a political limbo. Rantzau kept in touch, but he was
incapable of reviving their project on his own. None the less,
Helphand's belief in the inevitability of the revolution made it
possible for him to weather the crisis, and to wait for his rehabilitation by the events in Russia. Only time would show whether
his work had been as pointless as the Foreign Ministry was
inclined to assume.
He kept up both his revolutionary headquarters in Copenhagen, and his interest in the work of subversion in the Tsarist
Empire. He is very likely to have received further support for his
activities in Russia from the Political Section of the General Staff.23
When the Foreign Ministry's interest in the revolution in Russia
and in Helphand again revived in March 1917, we catch a glimpse
of Helphand swiftly transferring his activities, carried out under
the auspices of the General Staff, back under the protection of the
diplomats. Nevertheless, during the year 1916, his Copenhagen
export and import business in fact extended its scope. Its transactions seldom lacked political purpose.
23
The papers of the General Staff were destroyed by fire in World War II.
9
Business and Politics
Early in 1916, Helphand decided to bring a personal
matter to a conclusion. For more than twenty years he had been
tolerated in Germany as an alien: he had suffered expulsion from
a number of federal states, including Prussia; he had been put
into custody, on a number of occasions, for 'breach of banishment'. Apart from the threat of being extradited to Russia, he
had been unable to participate fully in Germany's politics. He
remained a homeless, vagabond revolutionary; the Social Democrat party was his 'new fatherland', and he regarded such terms
as 'people' and 'nation' as the relics of a dying age. He may have
detested Prussia and everything the term stood for, and he may
have suffered an acute aversion from the ways of the German
lower middle class. Yet he acquired, over the years, respect for
Germany's civilization, which he thought 'more complex and
more profound' than that of other countries he knew well.
Originally, German language and literature had been for him the
gateway out of the east European spiritual ghetto. In 1891 he
had written to Liebknecht that he was looking for a new country,
but one for a reasonable price: the consideration hardly applied
in 1916. Helphand could now afford the best.
He demanded it, in abrupt terms. He had suffered too long at
the hands of the bureaucrats, and he was going to stand no more
nonsense from them. He had mentioned his request to Zimmermann in the Foreign Ministry in December; on 2 January 1916 he
requested 'as speedy a settlement of this question as possible'.
He wanted to become a German, not a Prussian, citizen (naturalization was usually granted by one of the federal states; only
foreigners who were employed in official positions could receive
Reich German citizenship): Helphand agreed to accept Prussian
citizenship only after the Minister of the Interior had expressed
193
'grave misgivings'. In the curriculum vitae which accompanied

his application, Helphand made it clear that he saw himself as a
bearer of German civilization, as a socialist who had enjoyed, for
many years, 'a world-wide reputation as a German scholar and a
representative of the ideas of German Social Democracy'.1 'I am
renewing my application for German citizenship', Helphand
added, 'for personal reasonsbecause I wish the intellectual
bond between the German people and myself to be formally
recognizedbut above all for political reasons. It is important
that in the great struggle between the nations, which the war has
brought about, everyone should perform his part with all the
strength he can muster. This is possible in my case only if I
become a fully recognized German citizen.'
During the preliminary negotiations for his naturalization,
Helphand behaved in a self-confident, even arrogant, manner. He
knew he was applying from a position of strength; it was merely
the purchase of another bourgeois convenience.
In this respect he had made a considerable advance in the last
few months. Soon after his arrival in Copenhagen, he had
acquired a large house in the Vodrovsvej, the fashionable quarter
of the town, which he furnished lavishly and without taste. He
then bought one of the biggest cars on the market, a large Adler
limousine; several thoroughbred dogs kept guard over his property. He had another residence at his disposal in Berlin, which
he used very rarely: he preferred to impress his German comrades with a suite in the Hotel Kaiserhof. He even made an
experiment in conventional family life. He lived with a Frau
Maria Schillinger: their sonHelphand's thirdborn in the
middle of 1917, bore the surname of his mother and the Christian
name of his father. Helphand always spoke with great pride of
the child, regarding him as a guarantee of the continuity of the
family tradition. Like the rest of Helphand's children, Alexander
Schillinger also disappeared into the whirlpool which Europe
was later to become.
Helphand's generous hospitality as well as his efforts to make
concessions to the bourgeois way of life, made it possible for him
to establish, very slowly, personal contacts with the leaders of the
1
11 February 1916, in WK 11c sec.
194
right wing of the socialist party. Whereas previously Helphand

had had to be content with meeting them in private, now, in the
spring of 1916, he started to make occasional visits to a number of
coffee-houses, especially the Caf Victoria, where Sdekum,
Cunow, Baake, Haenisch, Lensch, and others were usually to be
found. Most of them were contributing to Die Glocke, which was
then paying unusually high fees. With their help, he was soon
able to start expanding his publishing activities.
He was still thinking, as he had done at the turn of the century,
in terms of a socialist publishing company, through which he
could exert a direct influence on party politics, and which would
become a rallying point for his personal supporters. He had no
need to fear the difficulties into which he had run in the case of
Gorki's contract. In his own words, Helphand was suffering
from a 'surfeit of mammon': he could afford to carry even a
continuous and substantial loss.
In the summer of 1916, Helphand had his Verlag fr Sozialwissenschaft transferred from Munich to Berlin; under Heinrich
Cunow as the new director, it soon embarked on the publication
of its own pamphlets and book series. A year later, Helphand
bought the paper Internationale Korrespondenz, which had been
established by Albert Baumeister at the beginning of the war.
Through its translations of foreign press commentaries, the new
Internationale Korrespondenz exercised a considerable influence
on the provincial socialist newspapers. At the same time, Helphand's publishing house extended its activities to the army:
20,000 copies of its Sozialdemokratische Feldpost were sent fortnightly to the front, free of charge.
Helphand was building for the future, regardless of the price.
The political purpose behind his publishing activities was easy to
detect: he was a German subject, and political office would no
longer be closed to him. He was patiently assembling a group of
followers and establishing a direct means of communication with
the rank-and-file party members.
Apart from his Berlin enterprise, Helphand's 'Institute for the
Study of the Social Consequences of the War' in Copenhagen was
now also in good running order. He had first used it as a decoy
for the recruitment of the Russian exiles, but it soon settled down
Business and Politics 195
to the pursuit of legitimate research. He succeeded in attracting

local Scandinavian talent to the Institute: Professor Karl Larsen,
who entertained pro-German sympathies in the war, looked after
its interests; Sven Trier, the Danish socialist, became its secretary. At the Institute's headquarters on the sterbrogade, a
unique library grew up in the course of the war, which Helphand
subsidized at the monthly rate of 40,000 kroner. It also published,
from March 1916, a special bulletin containing statistical material
and articles on the political and social impact of the war. Helphand himself made use of this material in a study of the social
consequences of the war, published by his Berlin firm in the
summer of 1917.2
Helphand told Brockdorff-Rantzau nothing about the activities
of the Institute. Only in December 1915 did the Minister discover,
by the aid of a confidential agent, that the Institute in fact
existed, and that it kept 'a number of young Jews' only mildly
busy.3 Since Helphand was the President of the organization,
Rantzau could not help suspecting the existence of 'political
aims' behind it; it was not until January 1916 that he dared 'most
humbly to observe that the work of the Institute for the Study of
the Social Consequences of the War has increased considerably,
and that we cannot deny it a certain academic value'.4
Helphand was unusually sensitive to any doubts as to the
genuine scholarly purpose of the undertaking. In the French
newspaper Humanit in October 1915, the Russian publicist
Alexinskiformerly a Bolshevikdescribed Helphand as an
agent provocateur and his Copenhagen Institute as an organization
of spies, hiding behind 'the name of knowledge'. Through one of
the Institute's employees named Zurabov, Helphand sent a sharp
denial to Humanit, threatening an action against the author of
the article.5 The Foreign Ministry in Berlin was of the opinion,
however, that there was no point in stirring up the affair: on its
advice, Helphand let the matter drop.
Helphand's extreme sensitivity was largely due to the fact that
he wanted to be seen in the role of a patron of learning. Alexinski's
2
3
4
Die soziale Bilanz des Krieges, Berlin, 1917.
Report by Herr Otto, in Akten der Gesandtschaft Kopenhagen, 124 a.

Report No. 6 of 14 January 1916, loc. cit.
Humanit 19 October 1915. 'Le Cas Parvus. Une Protestation et une Rplique.'
196
insinuations were in fact wrong. Helphand was spending a

lot of his own money on the Institute and he maintained, quite
rightly, that it was a scholarly enterprise. As to its international
reputationHelphand thought that the Institute had achieved
thisits accomplishments were not very impressive. After the war,
a few writers made use of the material assembled in Copenhagen:
they were neither numerous nor well known enough to hand
down the name of Helphand, with the reputation he so much
desired, to posterity.
All this multifarious academic and publishing activity was
made possible by Helphand's amazing success in business. It
touched a dominant instinct in him: its results were much more
tangible than those of his writing on the problems of economic
theory. He had always wanted financial success, but now he
wanted it more than anything else. He had a good eye for the
deficiencies in the economic structure of capitalism, and he
avoided competition with the established financial interests.
Instead, he concentrated on the neglected areas of economy and
international trade. After his arrival in Denmark he continued
to make money on an even larger scale than he had done in
Constantinople.
In Copenhagen, Helphand soon made a promising start. First,
he obtained a licence for a poster company, which was to turn
the customary German system of 'advertising columns' into a
profitable sinecure. Then, late in the summer of 1915, he founded
the 'Trading and Export Company'Handels og-Eksportkompagnietwhich, apart from serving as a front-organization for
Helphand's revolutionary activities, soon became a profitable
business enterprise. Jakob Frstenberg was its managing director; his connexions in Russia and Poland proved useful in both
of the company's functions.
In April 1916, Georg Sklarz joined the Eksportkompagniet. He
had worked for the Admiralty and for Military Intelligence;
apart from a capital of 40,000 marks and the goodwill of the
General Staff, he brought with him into Helphand's company the
assistance of his two brothers, Waldemar and Heinrich. Georg
was the eldest of the three Sklarzes; he was a small man with an
ascetic face and very deep-set eyes. He was a resourceful, versa-
tile businessman, unscrupulous and tough. Brockdorff-Rantzau

himself was much impressed by the little man with the suffering
face: he kept on recommending Georg Sklarz 'most warmly' to
his cousin Langwerth von Simmern.
Waldemar Sklarz worked for Georg as his secretary, while
Heinrich was engaged in carrying out secret commissions in the
field of economic espionage. He had been sent to Copenhagen at
the end of 1915, by the General Staff: he was to report regularly
on the influence exercised by the Allied countries on Danish
economic life. Heinrich Sklarz ran, under the cover name
'Pundyk', a small intelligence agency in Copenhagen; it employed
a few agents, double agents, ladies of doubtful virtue, and a
female artiste called Amatis. Apart from his main field of investigation, Sklarz specialized in collecting information on the passage
of embargoed German goods through Denmark on the way to
the Allied countries.
The German Naval Staff paid 4,000 kroner a month towards
the running expenses of Heinrich Sklarz's agency: the money
was passed on through Helphand and Georg Sklarz. Their trading
company made use of the information gathered by Heinrich
Sklarz's agency; the official co-operation and protection certainly
did not have an adverse effect on the size of the profits made by
the Eksportkompagniet. It satisfied all the interested parties:
trading profits could be regarded as a reward for the political
services rendered by Helphand and his friends.
Although the range of their company's business was wideit
extended as far as the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United
Statesit concentrated largely on trade with Russia. It dealt in
a variety of goods, from stockings and contraceptives to raw
materials and machinery: Helphand procured copper, rubber,
tin, and corn for Germany's war economy, while exporting
chemicals and machinery to Russia. Some of the goods were
covered by export licences, others were smuggled; they were
taken over, as soon as they crossed the Russian frontier, by the
Petrograd firm of Fabian Klingsland. A woman called Evgeniya
Sumenson acted as an agent for this firm; it was she who kept in
touch with Frstenberg. The Klingsland firm was authorized, by
an agreement in April 1916, to sell medical supplies from
M.R.-O
198
Copenhagen, and then to deposit the profit on a special account

at a Petrogradbank.6
After the failure of the strike movement in January 1916,
Helphand's firm either continued to finance current revolutionary
expenditure in Russia, orand this alternative sounds more
probablewas accumulating capital in Russia to be used for
similar purposes in the future. Whatever the case may have been,
the business proved a profitable undertaking: it could stand on
its own feet, without drawing on official subsidies.
Helphand himself had extended his business interests across
the whole of Europe. In 1916 he paid taxes to the Danish internal
revenue on a capital of 540,000 kroner, and on an income of
41,000 kroner; it represented only a small part of his fortune. In
July, Helphand invested a 'considerable sum 'in a firm in Bulgaria
and Turkey, which was to reorganize the agrarian production in
these countries with the help of the German Government; he had
other sums of money invested in almost all the neutral countries.
He had, however, not yet exhausted the business opportunities
offered by the Scandinavian countries. The strength of Denmark's economic ties with Britain caused concern among the
German diplomats, for they feared that the country might come
under an even stronger Allied influence. In an attempt to counter
this development, the Danish socialist movement was to prove
useful. In the circles of the Danish socialists and trade unionists,
Germany could count on a more cordial atmosphere: the socialist
ties between the two countries were not completely cut off by the
outbreak of the war.
Although Helphand's welcome by the local socialists had
been rather cool, he succeeded, by the end of 1915, in establishing
close contacts with the leaders of the trade unions. The Danish
unions were practical and undogmatic organizations which had
become, through their various co-operative and trading offshoots,
deeply embedded in the economic life of the country. It was this
aspect of their activities that brought Helphand into contact with
Karl Kiefer, the influential and shrewd trade union leader.
Helphand was favourably impressed by the enterprise shown
by the Danish trade unions: he realized that their trading com6
Nachlass Helphand, Rep. 92.
199
panics could be supported by Germany in an unobtrusive,

purely commercial way. There existed, at the time, an opening
through which Germany's influence could make itself felt.
Britain was the main exporter of coal to Denmark; its price rose
sharply owing to the war until, in the winter of 1915-16, severe
shortages of coal hit the Danish economy, and especially the
private consumer. In the spring of 1916, Helphand told Brockdorff-Rantzau of his plan for making Denmark less dependent on
coal supplies from Britain. He proposed that coal, imported from
Germany, could be sold to the private consumer direct through a
special trade union sales organization. Helphand was convinced
that, by cutting out all intermediate trading, the price of English
coal could be undercut.
Again, the Minister to Copenhagen gave his unqualified support to Helphand's plans; in the middle of June 1916 he went
once more to Berlin, with the Minister's recommendation, in
order to discuss the project with Baron Langwerth von Simmern,
and with the official 'export bureau'.7 After some initial difficulties, which were soon removed with the help of Dr. Tpffer, the
commercial attache in Copenhagen, Helphand swiftly brought
the negotiations to the point where the Danish trade unions were
made a concrete offer of supplies of German coal. They founded
their own distribution company called the Arbejdernes Faellesorganisations Braendselfortning A/S:8 the German authorities
agreed to supply it with a minimum of 90,000 tons of coal a
month.
Helphand held no official position on the board of the distribution company: its chairman was Karl Madsen, the president of
the Danish trade union movement, who was assisted by Karl
Kiefer and V. G. A. Walther; two Germansa Herr Albrecht
and Georg Sklarzlooked after the technical side of the organization. Nevertheless, there remained an important part for
Helphand to play: it is very likely that, without his assistance,
the whole transaction would have broken down.
He kept the shipment of coal from Germany to Denmark in his
7
Helphand to the Minister to Copenhagen, 27 June 1916, in Nachlass BrockdorffRantzau, H231402-H231407.

8
P. G. Chesnais, Parvuset le parti socialiste danois, Paris, 1918, p. 16.
200The Merchant of Revolution
own hands. In October 1916, he founded his own freight company, the Kbenhavns Befragtnings-og Transport-Kompagniet, a
share in which he gave to the Danish trade unions; the company
declared itself ready to look after the entire transportation of coal.
At this point, however, Helphand ran into a variety of vested
interests. Hugo Stinnes, the powerful industrialist who had
hitherto controlled the export of coal to Denmark, as well as
Herr Huldermann, a representative of the Hamburg-Amerika
shipping line, raised objections; the insurance companies were
unwilling to commit themselves to a quotation of a fixed rate of
premium. There came a point when the whole project appeared
in danger of running into insuperable difficulties. No one connected with Germany's coal trade showed the slightest sympathy
for a competitive undertaking, by which the Danish trade unions
were largely to benefit.
The difficulties did not put Helphand off. On the contrary. He
found himself, once again, in a situation he was used to: he had
to build up a large-scale organization from scratch, and as fast as
he could. And once again he was able to take advantage of an
inconsistency in the existing arrangements. The union of the
German shipping-lines and the independent shipowners in
Stettin were then locked in fierce competition, and Helphand
made good use of this. He was able to offer steady employment
for the freighters; in return, he received special terms. He also
bought a number of freighters and went into business himself as
an independent operator.
The arrangements for the shipment of coal from Germany
worked far too well. Towards the end of the autumn, the Danish
docks came under a veritable bombardment from Helphand's
coal. The agreed monthly minimum was easily exceeded; the
dockside warehouses were soon full to capacity; there was
neither enough space nor labour for unloading the freighters.
Because of the delays in unloading, Helphand ran into difficulties
with the shipowners; in the end, the saturation of the docks
became so severe that some 200,000 tons of coal had to be put on
a pit heap outside Copenhagen.
At the same time, the trade-union-owned distribution company was unable to sell, and therefore to buy, the agreed quota.
Sklarz's efforts to find new storage space were frustrated by the

Danish coal dealers as well asaccording to Sklarzby English
agents; they all had good reasons for wanting the venture to fail.
Helphand was the only person who could save it. At the most
critical moment he gave the distribution company a credit of one
million kroner, which tided it over the temporary difficulties.
The failure on the distribution side aroused the German
opponents of the project once again. Brockdorff-Rantzau received
reports from the Hamburg-Amerika line stating that 'the whole
affair was handled in an unbusinesslike manner', and that,
because of the fines resulting from delays in unloading, the price
of coal would be considerably increased. The Minister was
advised to withdraw from this 'great bankruptcy' while there was
still time, so as not 'to sink into the abyss of political oblivion'.9
Dr. Tpffer, the commercial attache, also expressed grave misgivings. He suggested, in the middle of November, that the
enterprise was, in its present form, a complete failure and that
it would do more harm than good. According to the information
at his disposal, Tpffer told the Minister, only a small part of the
German coal was helping the Danish workers. The company had
sold most of the coal to industry and to the Government: it had
in fact developed a coal businessin order to overcome the
temporary crisiswhich in no way corresponded to the original
intentions. In addition, he considered Helphand's freightage
profitstwo kroner a tontoo high. Tpffer was very pessimistic as to the future of the business, and he regarded intervention
from the Berlin Ministry of War as most likely.10
Before taking any steps one way or the other, Rantzau waited
to hear the opinion of Eric Scavenius, the Danish Foreign Minister. They met on 18 November, the day Dr. Tpffer submitted
his report. Scavenius implored Rantzau straight away 'not to be
discouraged by the unfortunate experiences which, perhaps,
cannot be avoided in such a great undertaking'.11 When Rantzau
pointed out that Hugo Stinnes would try to turn every difficulty
to his own advantage, Scavenius said that because of this and
9
B. Huldermann to Brockdorff-Rantzau, 11 October 1916, Nachlass Brockdorff-Rantzau

H231400-H231401.
Memorandum from Dr. Tpffer, 18 November 1916, Nachlass Brockdorff-Rantzau.
11
loc. cit., Brockdorff-Rantzau's memorandum of 19 November 1916.
10
202
because of the threat of English intervention, every measure must

be taken to enable the unions to carry on with their coal imports.
The Foreign Minister declared himself 'against giving up the coal
business in any circumstances' becausehe could not have
given a better reason'the most important means of taking up an
independent attitude in regard to England would be taken out of
our hands'.
After the talk with Scavenius, Brockdorff-Rantzau could no
longer entertain any doubts as to the political importance of the
coal business. Apart from continuing to give it his full protection,
Rantzau helped to put it back on its feet. On Dr. Tpffer's
suggestion, deliveries of coal were temporarily stopped, to give
the transport and distribution companies enough breathing space
to reduce their reserves and sort out their organization. They
used the opportunity successfully. The distribution company
purchased, in the course of the year 1917, a large number of
wharves and warehouses, which employed about 1,000 people.
At the same time, Helphand converted his freightage agency into
a regular shipping firm, which could guarantee fixed rates on
long-term contracts.
The Danes wanted the security of long-term agreements: this,
however, the German authorities refused, preferring to regulate
the supply of coal on a monthly basis. In this way they could also
regulate the amount of food and the number of horses imported
from Denmark, as well as keeping the Danesas the Foreign
Ministry in Berlin saw itunder control. Otherwise, Helphand
had it all his own way. He even succeeded, with the support of
Brockdorif-Rantzau, and after lengthy negotiations in Berlin, in
coining directly to terms with the mining companies in the Ruhr
area.
The German authorities continued to regard the coal trade as
being of first-rate political importance. When, for instance, difficulties arose after the declaration of unrestricted U-boat warfare,
they were soon ironed out by Rantzau's intervention with
Ludendorff. The German Minister to Copenhagen certainly had
every reason to stand by the coal agreements, as their political
results exceeded all expectations. As early as August 1916, Rantzau was able to report that the deliveries had had 'such a favour-
able effect on the Socialist Party that they are prepared to use
their parliamentary influence in any way I might suggest'.12 On
the same day Scavenius, the Foreign Minister, told Rantzau that
to his delight he found enthusiastic support among the socialists
for his policies. When the anti-German newspapers in Denmark
published disclosures about the bribery of the Danish trade
unions by the German Government, Rantzau emphatically repeated that, without the coal business, it would have been impossible 'to win the Social Democrat trade unions, and the party,
over to our side'.13
Success in Denmark led Helphand to consider applying the
same methods in other neutral countries. The German Minister
to Stockholm, Lucius von Stdten, was enthusiastic when
Jansson, the German trade unionist of Swedish origin, put the
idea before him, on Helphand's request. 'Quite regardless of
whether or not it suits German industry', Lucius wrote to the
State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry, 'the thing must go
through.'14 Helphand's coal business in Sweden was not, however,
as successful as his deal in Denmark; from Norway, Jansson
brought with him a flat refusal by the local socialists. A similar
rejection came from Switzerland after Robert Grimm, the influential socialist editor of the Berner Tagwacht, had put Helphand's proposal before the Swiss trade unions.
Although Helphand soon found out that the same formula
could not be applied in every case, he had scored a great success
in Denmark. He needed this, especially after the debacle in
Russia in January 1916. He was now at least partially rehabilitated in the eyes of the German Government. He was able to
prove that Helfferich, the State Secretary in the Treasury, had
been wrong when he described Helphand as a Utopian and
revolutionary dreamer.
In this penumbral region between politics and business,
Helphand was in his element. He had a lot to offer, to a variety of
men. He made the coal market safe for the Danish socialists: they
12
Brockdorff-Rantzau to the Foreign Ministry, telegram No. 1190 of 12 August 1916,

in Europa Genera lia.
BrockdorfF-Rantzau to the Chancellor, Report No. 76 of 6 March 1917, in Akten der
Gesandtschaft {Copenhagen, 124.
14
Lucius to Zimmermann, letter of 12 June 1917, in WK 2 geh.
13
204
gained a great deal of money and influence for their organizations

during the war, and they repaid Helphand by remaining loyal to
him until his death. To Rantzau, Helphand handed over the
political laurels. The achievement of Denmark's 'benevolent
neutrality' was credited to the Minister; his reputation was made
in Copenhagen. It was a repayment for the disappointment in
Russia.
Helphand himself mainly made money: his gains from the coal
business ran into millions of kroner. He never denied the profits
he was making: he even was, in his way, rather off-hand about
them. 'Be it far from me', he wrote in 1918, 'to justify capitalist
gain by personal qualities. But I do not see why I should not
bring some of the surplus value, hoarded by the capitalist class,
over to my side.'15 He was, he admitted, a 'businessman, industrialist, capitalist', but he was not using his money any more
selfishly than was customary at the time. He might have claimed
that a considerable part of his income was used for the support of
scholarship, in the form of the Institute in Copenhagen, and that,
in addition, he was financing a holiday home for German children
in Denmark.
That he did not do so is another point in his favour. He felt
no need to justify his wealth, and to counter the envy of his less
fortunate enemies by drawing their attention to his generosity.
Nor did he have any scruples about enjoying his good fortune,
and letting his friends share in the enjoyment. In relation to
money, Helphand did not feel himself bound by the conventional
socialist code.
It is possible that his business methods would have been somewhat out of place in the City of London: neither he nor his partner Sklarz corresponded exactly to the accepted picture of the
'city gent'. Helphand knew that he was on his own, that he had
nothing but his wits to rely on; he may well have reflected that
the embellishments on the old firm's coat-of-arms are usually
added by the second or third generations who can also afford to
take a more leisurely approach to the problems of accumulation
of capital. Anyway, in comparison with most business magnates
of his time, Helphand was by no means as unscrupulous and as
15
grasping as he was later described. He was an opportunist in

business, and a passionate businessman: he had no scruples in
exploiting the weaknesses of a system for which he had no liking
whatever.
For this reason he was unable to treat his financial success with
the respect that was its due. The money he made was less important for him personally than for his political plans. He was a
Marxist millionaire: a nouveau riche with a mission. There existed
certain basic similarities between his coal plan for Denmark and
the revolutionary memorandum of March 1915 for Russia. On
both occasions, Helphand showed that he believed that any
political aim could be realized with sufficient money, that the
elite of the socialist leaders could resist the lure of mammon no
more than any other social group, that friendship, as much as
political support, had to be bought. Such a view informed his
political strategy: it was the essence of his political and human
experience.
10
Revolution in Russia
Within a few weeks, in the spring of 1917, the revolution in Russia tore down the structure of the Tsarist State. Early
in March, starvation and fury forced the workers in Petrograd
into the streets. Soon the political leaders emerged to make
demands on behalf of the revolution. It was spontaneous, and
therefore unexpected: it surprised the Russian exiles even more
than the belligerent governments.
Two and a half years' battering along a front-line which
stretched hundreds of miles between the Baltic and the Black
Seas, accompanied by economic and administrative dislocation
on a vast scale, such was the necessary setting for the collapse of
the Tsarist regime. It opened up new perspectives for the continuation of war, or for the conclusion of peace. It justified
Helphand's expectations. His public acknowledgement of the
revolution in Russia was decisive. 'Your victory is our victory',
he wrote in Die Glocke on 24 March 1917. 'Democratic Germany
must offer democratic Russia a helping hand for the achievement
of peace and for effective co-operation in the field of social and
cultural progress.' He saw the collapse of Tsarism as the result of
Germany's military victory; the revolution was a mass movement,
which concluded the 'momentous development which started in
1905'. Russia now had to complete her internal organization:
Helphand described an immediate peace as the first task of the
revolution.
But public pronouncements were, as far as Helphand was concerned, no more than a means of expressing his sympathy for the
revolution. He was more explicit in his correspondence with the
German party leaders. On 22 March he wrote to Adolf Mller
that he would like to see the introduction of the following
measures: arming of the Russian proletariat, public prosecution
Revolution in Russia 207
of the Tsar, redistribution of the landed estates, introduction of

the eight-hour working day in industry, the summoning of the
constituent assembly, and the conclusion of peace: a programme
which came close to Bolshevik ideas.1
He knew that he would need help, now more than ever, from
the German authorities. As soon as the first reports on the success
of the revolution reached Copenhagen, Helphand visited Brockdorff-Rantzau and asked him to transmit the following telegram
to Berlin: 'Revolution is victorious, Russia is politically incapacitated, constituent assembly means peace.'2 On this occasion, the
Minister received Helphand's optimism in a more reserved
manner. He thought that Helphand expressed his opinions
with an 'apodictic certainty': it was not, after all, the first
time that Rantzau had heard Helphand passing judgements
on Russia with the same self-assurance. Despite his caution, the
Minister thought that 'these events are a great stroke of luck for
us'.
Once again, Rantzau showed himself ready to take careful note
of what Helphand had to say. On 1 April, a detailed exchange of
views took place between the two men.3 Helphand developed the
view that Russia was tired of the war, and that a desire for peace
should soon sweep over the whole country. For this reason,
Germany had to abstain from a military offensive: Helphand
feared that it might create a patriotic mood 'for the defence of
liberties now achieved'. The Russian revolution had to be left
alone in order to 'develop logically the consequences of the clash
of interests which it had created'. The effect of the clash of class
interests, Helphand went on, would shatter the very foundations
of Russia. The peasants would expropriate, by force, the land of
the nobility; the troops would desert the trenches and shoot their
upper-class officers. The Ukrainians, the Caucasians, and other
minority nationalities, would free themselves from Petrograd and
break up the centralized organization of the Russian State. And
starvation would continue to tax the patience of the masses: in
1
Parvus to Adolf Mller, in Akten der Gesandtschaft Kopenhagen (Russland).

Brockdorff-Rantzau to Langwerth von Simmern, telegram of 17 March 1917, in
Akten der Gesandtschaft Kopenhagen, 123.
3
Shorthand minutes of the conversation are in Nachlass Brockdorff-Rantz.au, H232307H232325.
2
208
Helphand's words, the 'worst anarchy' would occur in two or

three months.
He pointed out that Germany's policy towards revolutionary
Russia could follow one of two paths: the Berlin Government
could decide on a large-scale occupation of Russia, and on
breaking up the centralized Empire; or it could conclude an early
peace with the provisional Government.
For the realization of the first alternative Helphand recommended a powerful military offensive, to be launched in three
months' time, which would, at the height of anarchy, conquer
South Russia and render the country defenceless. In this case,
however, the German Government 'would have to be determined
to exploit ruthlessly the victory in the political field. This would
involve the disarmament of the Russian army, the demolition of
her fortresses, the destruction of her navy, prohibition of the
manufacture of armaments and munitions, and an extensive
occupation of Russia. If this did not happen, there is no doubt
that the Russian Empire would rapidly grow into a new and
aggressive military power, and its enmity would be all the more
dangerous to Germany, the greater the wounds inflicted on it
now.' In order to prepare the ground for this radical solution of
the Russian question, the 'extreme revolutionary movement will
have to be supported, in order to intensify anarchy'.
If, however, the German Government was not prepared, as
Helphand put it to Rantzau, to 'clear the decks in regard to
Russia', or if it regarded the enterprise as impracticable, then it
would have to make an effort to 'conclude peace with Russia, but
a peace which would leave no bitterness on either side'. Otherwise Helphand feared a repetition of 'what happened to our
relations with France in 1870, only with the difference that
France had not outgrown us economically or politically, whereas
Russia would doubtless develop an economic and political power
that would surpass that of the territorially limited Germany'. For
the achievement of this second aim, there was no point in trying
to intensify the condition of anarchy in Russia: a stable situation
would have to be brought about, and then negotiations opened
with the government that could guarantee peace.
Of the two choices, Helphand of course had his own pre-
ference. As he saw it, his revolutionary programme had advanced,

but not much: an early peace with the provisional Government
might even slow down further developments in this direction.
Anyway, at the time of his conversation with Rantzau, the possibility of peace with the new government in Petrograd appeared
to be remote. The revolution, it was calculated in Petrograd and
in other Allied capitals, would release fresh energies for the
successful continuation of Russia's war effort. Helphand's own
sympathies therefore lay with the first solution, which meant
lending full support to the 'extreme revolutionary movement',
that is, of Lenin and his Bolshevik party.
Helphand found himself in a situation similar to that of May
1915. Then, it may be remembered, Lenin refused to co-operate:
after the revolution in Russia, however, new factors had come
into play which wouldaccording to Helphand's calculations
force Lenin to adopt a different attitude towards a deal with
Helphand and with the Imperial German Government.
The circumstances were indeed different. In Switzerland,
Lenin was cut off from Russia and 'corked up, as if in a bottle';
he was desperately looking for a way out. Even a deal with the
devil, Lenin had declared, would suit him, if it made his return
to Petrograd possible.4
There was really no need for Lenin to have been so agitated.
The ground for a request to cross Germany had been prepared,
and there were a number of influential men in Berlin ready to
help. It was not the first time the German authorities had faced
such a request: as early as the summer of 1915, the Russian exiles
who were about to start working at Helphand's Institute had
travelled through Germany on their way to Copenhagen. Again
and again, Helphand had told the German diplomats what to
think about the effectiveness, as a subversive force in Russia, of
Lenin and his party. Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor,
recognized the momentous importance for Germany of the revolution in Russia; early in April he instructed the Minister to
Berne to establish contacts with the Russian exiles and to offer
them transit through Germany.
Helphand did not wait as long before taking action as the poli4
N. Krupskaya, Vospominaniya o Lenine, Moscow, 1957, pp. 273-6.
210
ticians in Berlin. While technical and legal means of transport

were still being discussed in the Foreign Ministry, he had already
taken the first practical steps. Since the transport of large numbers of Russian revolutionaries was complicated to arrange, he
thought that an immediate transit across Germany of Lenin and
Zinoviev, the two leading Bolsheviks, should be aimed at. It was
at this point that the Frstenberg link between Helphand and
Lenin proved its value.
Helphand first obtained the consent of the General Staffnot
the Foreign Ministryfor his plan, and then asked Frstenberg
to let Lenin know that the transit for him and Zinoviev had been
fixed, without, however, making it clear from which quarter the
help had come. Georg Sklarz at once travelled to Zrich to accompany the two Bolshevik leaders on their journey across
Germany.5
Helphand was wrong to assume that Lenin would accept the
offer at once. On 24 March, the Bolshevik leader asked Zinoviev
to send the following telegrams to Frstenberg: 'Letter dispatched. Uncle [i.e. Lenin] wants to know more. Official transit
for individuals unacceptable. Write express to Warschawski,
Klusweg 8.' Georg Sklarz had left Copenhagen before the arrival
of Zinoviev's telegram, and he further complicated matters in
Zrich, by offering to pay the two Bolsheviks' fares. Lenin
abruptly broke off the negotiations.
Helphand had made a grave mistake. Without meaning to, he
had built a trap for the two Bolshevik leaders: had Lenin accepted
the offer, he would have compromised himself so much in the eyes
of his compatriots that he would have been of use neither to the
Bolsheviks nor to the Germans. And the tactlessness of Helphand's offer was matched by the clumsiness with which Georg
Sklarz approached the Bolsheviks in Zrich. The provisional
Government in Petrograd was still at war with Germany, and
despite the amnesty it had recently declared for political offenders, there were risks Lenin knew he could not afford to take. A
free trip on his own across Germany, was definitely one of them.
5
Frstenberg's communication to Lenin is not available; Lenin's reply, through

Zinoviev, has been published in Leninskii Sbornik, vol. XIII, p. 259; cf. also, telegram
No. 353 of 27 March 1917, the Foreign Ministry to the Minister in Berne, in WK 2
geh.
When Helphand talked to Brockdorff-Rantzau on 1 April, he

knew that his proposal to Lenin had run into difficulties. He
decided to visit Berlin in order to discuss the developments in
Russiawhich were now again absorbing all his attentionwith
both the diplomats and the socialists. His reputation as an expert
on Russia had greatly improved: Rantzau's activities on 2 April,
while Helphand was on the way to Berlin, bore witness to this.
First of all, the Minister drafted a long telegram to the Foreign
Ministry, summing up the views Helphand had expressed, and
making them his own.
Either we are both militarily and economically in a position to continue
the war effectively until the autumn. In that case it is essential that we
try now to create the greatest possible degree of chaos in Russia. To
this end, any patently apparent interference in the course of the Russian
revolution should be avoided. In my opinion, we should, on the other
hand, make every effort surreptitiously to deepen the differences between the moderate and the extremist parties, for it is greatly in our
interests that the latter should gain the upper hand, since a drastic
change would then be inevitable and would take forms which would
necessarily shake the very existence of the Russian Empire. . . . In all
probability, we should, in about three months' time, be able to count
on the disintegration having reached the stage where we could break
the power of the Russians by military action. If we were now to launch
a premature offensive, we should only give all the various centrifugal
forces a motive for uniting and even, perhaps, lead the army to rally in
its fight against Germany.6
On the same day, Brockdorff-Rantzau wrote a personal letter

to Zimmermann, Jagow's successor as Secretary of State in the
Foreign Ministry. In every respect, Zimmermann was a much
tougher person than the former State Secretary, and he had no
scruples about the methods employed in the pursuit of his
policies. Separate peace with Russia was one of them: but peace
with a country so weakened that she would be dependent on
Germany's goodwill. He was therefore convinced of the necessity
of Russia's complete political and military breakdown: he understood that this, as well as separate peace, could be achieved only
6
212
with the aid of the most radical wing of the Russian revolutionaries.
Rantzau had been on friendly terms with Zimmermann for
many years, and now, in the letter he wrote on 2 April, he asked
the State Secretary to 'be kind enough personally to receive Dr.
Helphand'.7
I am well aware that his character and reputation are not equally highly
esteemed by all his contemporaries, and that your predecessor was
especially fond of whetting his sharp tongue on him. In answer to this,
I can only assert that Helphand has realized some extremely positive
political achievements, and that, in Russia, he was, quite unobtrusively,
one of the first to work for the result that is now our aim. Certain
things, perhaps even everything, would be different now if Jagow had
not totally ignored his suggestions two years ago!
The connexions which Helphand has in Russia could now, in my
opinion, be decisive to the development of the whole situation. Moreover, he is also in such close contact with the Social Democrats in
Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia that he could influence them at any
time.
He is genuinely grateful to Your Excellency, as he knows that he has
your intercession to thank for his acceptance into the German state at a
time when his position was more than precarious, and he now feels
himself to be a German, not a Russian, in spite of the Russian revolution, which should have brought about his rehabilitation. I therefore
ask you to give him a hearing, since I am convinced that, properly
handled, he could be extremely useful, not only in the decision of
questions of international politics, but also in the internal politics of
the Empire.
By the time the Foreign Ministry issued a formal invitation to

an audience with the State Secretary, Helphand had already left
Berlin; he had, however, discussed the technical details of the
scheduled transport of the Russian exiles with von Bergen in the
Foreign Ministry, arranging for Wilhelm Jansson, his trade
unionist friend, to be included among the officials who were to
accompany the Russian party.
Helphand did not wait for the State Secretary's invitation
7
From the Blue Book People of Our Time
IX. Brockdorff-Rantzau
X. Bethmann-Hollweg, Reich Chancellor, von Jagow, State

Secretary, and Karl Helffench, State Secretary
in the Treasury, 1915
because he had more important business on hand. He had to win

over the executive of the 'majority socialists' for his plans. So far
their leaders, Philipp Scheidemann and Friedrich Ebert, had
appeared unable to grasp the significance of the political changes
in Petrograd. They knew little about Russia, and they were quite
lost in regard to the problems of eastern policy. Their acknowledgement of the revolution had been rather off-hand: the telegrams to the chairmen of the Duma and the Soviet, drafted by
Scheidemann, had been dispatched in the teeth of Ebert's opposition.
In the evening of 4 April, Helphand, together with Jansson,
addressed the party executive. They announced that within a
few days Borbjerg, the Danish socialist deputy and editor of the
Copenhagen Socialdemokrat, would travel to Petrograd. He
intended to meet the leaders of the Soviet and discuss with them
the possibilities of peace; both Helphand and Jansson suggested
that a representative of the German party executive should travel
to Copenhagen as soon as possible, in order to provide Borbjerg
with instructions for his mission. Speed, Helphand insisted, was
essential: Borbjerg was to leave within a few days, as he was
determined to reach Petrograd before Hjalmar Branting, the
Swedish socialist leader whose sympathies lay with the other side,
the Allies.
The executive were impressed, and they at once decided to
send Scheidemann, Ebert, and Gustav Bauer, the trade union
secretary, to Copenhagen. None of the party leaders had a passport of his own, and they applied for them to the Foreign
Ministry. When Scheidemann recalled, in his memoirs, that
Zimmermann directed his Ministry to issue the necessary documents 'overnight', he did so with a good deal of pride.8 Zimmermann was glad that the socialists had concurred with Helphand's
suggestion, and he asked them especially to impress on Borbjerg
Germany's desire for peace, and the fact that Poland should not
prove an obstacle to a settlement.
On 6 April, the German party leaders set out on their journey.
Helphand travelled with them; he had made all the arrangements
for the trip. Seats on the train were reserved; rooms had been
8
P. Scheidemann, Memoiren eines Sozialdemokraten, Dresden, 1928, vol. 1, p. 421.

M.R.P
214
booked at the expensive Hotel Central in Copenhagen; a reception was waiting for the party leaders at Helphand's house on the
Vodrovsvej. The German socialists were not accustomed to this
kind of treatment and they were very impressed. Quite apart
from his political usefulnesshis connexions, in this case, with
the Danish socialistsHelphand was a considerate and lavish
host. He had not known Ebert and Scheidemann at all well before
their trip to Copenhagen; he succeeded in establishing, during
the expedition, a relationship of trust and friendship with them,
which later survived much adversity.
After dinner on their first day in Copenhagen, Helphand introduced Borbjerg to his friends. They liked their Danish comrade,
who made it clear that his sympathies lay on the side of Germany.
In what they told Borbjerg, Ebert and Scheidemann were carrying
out Zimmermann's and Helphand's instructions. They said that
Germany wanted a negotiated peace without annexations; it
would be easy, they declared, to come to an understanding about
some frontier rectifications. In the Balkans, however, the formula
of 'no annexations' was not generally applicable: but given
goodwill, even these problems could be settled. They added that
Borbjerg might assure the Russians that Germany did not intend
to launch an offensive on the Russian front.9
The German party leaders were so much absorbed by their
new role as participants in high-level politics that they entirely
lost sight of the interests of international socialism. They made
not a single reference to the possibility of direct co-operation
between the Russian and the German parties. It was left to
Helphand to stress, in the conversation with Borbjerg, the
socialist aspect of the new situation in Russia, and to draw the
attention of his comrades to the future development of socialism
in Europe.
Helphand told Borbjerg that it was nonsensical to draw
analogies from the events in Petrograd to the situation in
Germany, and he asked the Danish comrade to make it clear to
the Russian party leaders that, as long as the war lasted, no
revolution could occur in Germany. The tasks of the German
revolution were different: it did not have to remove, as in Russia,
9
P. Scheidemann, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 424.
an obsolete state structure only, but the whole of the capitalist

system. Russia was going through a bourgeois revolution,
Germany would go through a socialist one. Helphand therefore
advised the Russians not to worry about 'how freedom could be
established in Germany', but to strive for the achievement of
peace, which would bring the socialist workers out of the trenches
and back into the party organization.10
All this was rather vague and unsatisfactory: apart from the
assurance that the military would not launch an offensive on the
eastern front, Borbjerg took with him nothing for the Russians
worth having. It was, however, one way of establishing contact
with the Russian revolutionaries, and there were others that might
prove more effective.
On 9 April Helphand inquired, through Brockdorff-Rantzau,
about the date of the departure of the Russian migrs from
Zrich; he told the Foreign Ministry, at the same time, that he
intended to meet the Russians as soon as they arrived at Malm
in Sweden. Only now did he let the German party leaders know
that Lenin and Karl Radek, together with some forty other exiles,
were on their way from Switzerland to Stockholm. He tried hard
to convince Ebert, Scheidemann, and Bauer, who were then
about to start on their return journey to Berlin, that at least one
of them should stay in Copenhagen. There existed the possibility,
he told them, that the Russians might want to discuss the situation
with them, in which case a representative of the party should be
available to travel to Malm at once.
The German party leaders were rather taken aback by Helphand's announcement about the return of the Russian exiles.
They of course knew nothing about Helphand's connexions with
the Foreign Ministry, nor of its activities for the promotion of
chaos in Russia. In this particular case, they jumped to the
wrong conclusions: they thought of the transport of the migrs as
an 'arrangement of Dr. Helphand', who had carried it out without the knowledge of the German socialists in order to absolve
the party, should the plan misfire, from future incriminations.11
When Helphand suggested that one of them should stand
by, they behaved just as navely. Ebert said that he feared he
10
Scheidemann, op. cit., p. 425.
ibid., p. 427.
216
had no time to stay on in Copenhagen and that, anyway, the

Russians probably would not negotiate with their German comrades. Scheidemann, who was at first inclined to stay, was overruled. The German delegation found it impossible to wait for
the arrival of the Russians.
The party leaders did, however, provide Helphand with a
letter giving him full powers to negotiate on behalf of the
executive. For the first time in his life, he was able to act as the
representative of the German party: his main purpose was to get
in touch with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and he may well have
been glad that there would be no witnesses about.
Jakob Frstenberg had instructions to arrange a meeting with
Lenin: the company director met the Bolshevik leader in Malm,
and then travelled with him to Stockholm. They had enough time
to discuss the case of comrade Helphand on the train. Would it
be wise for Lenin to meet Helphand personally? The answer was
no, it certainly would not. Lenin knew that, especially after his
journey across Germany, he had to tread carefully and do nothing
to compromise himself.
When the Russian exiles arrived in Stockholm on 13 April,
Helphand was already waiting there. He understood that Lenin's
security precautions did not exclude the possibility of a confidential exchange of opinions through their mutual friend, Jakob
Frstenberg. Helphand therefore asked him to request information from Lenin about his political plans; 'peace was needed;
what did he want to do'. Lenin replied that 'he was not concerned
with diplomacy; his task was social-revolutionary agitation'.12
This reply did not satisfy Helphand: according to his own
testimony, he then asked Frstenberg to warn Lenin that '. . . he
may go on agitating; but if he is not interested in statesmanship,
then he will become a tool in my hands'.
Helphand was the proud owner of a letter giving him full
powers to negotiate on behalf of the German party, but it was
of no use to him. He may well have been disappointed when he
found out that Lenin was not inclined to risk a personal meeting:
hence the bitterness of his last message to the Bolshevik leader.
Lenin emerged as a much shrewder man than Helphand: there
12
was really no point in a high-level meeting. Whatever Helphand

may have thought about it, the two men were not in a position
to conclude peace between Germany and Russia, and Lenin's
own views on the necessity of peace were by no means secret.
The Bolshevik leader needed help but, above all, he had to be
cautious. Anything Helphand and the Germans could do for him
would have to be done in a roundabout way: in refusing him a
personal meeting, Lenin made precisely this hint.
Frstenberg was still available as a go-between, and now Karl
Radek arrived on the scene. He was, it should be remembered,
officially an Austro-Hungarian subject; it was with him that
Helphand spent most of the day on 13 April.
It was a crucial and entirely secret encounter: we shall never
know exactly what the two men had to say to each other. It is
unlikely that they spent much time discussing Marxist theories.
Helphand was in a position to promise massive support for the
Bolsheviks in the forthcoming struggle for political power in
Russia: Radek was empowered to accept the offer. The events of
the following months provide sufficient evidence that this was
precisely what happened in Stockholm on 13 April.
After the conversation with Helphand, Radek, because of his
Austro-Hungarian passport, was unable to continue the trip with
Lenin's party to Petrograd. He stayed on in Stockholm. Helphand
returned to Copenhagen three days later, and he went to see
Brockdorff-Rantzau at once. The Minister's telegram to Berlin
was brief and reticent, stating simply that Helphand was back
from Stockholm, where he had had talks with the Russian exiles,
and that he would arrive in Berlin on 18 April, to await an
invitation to an audience with Zimmermann and to report to the
executive committee of the Social Democrat party.13
The first meeting between Helphand and the party leaders
took place late at night, an hour after his arrival in Berlin; another
meeting was then arranged for the following day, 19 April. There
was no need to tell the socialists everything he had discussed in
Stockholm: their function, from Helphand's point of view, was
different from that of the diplomats. First of all, he wanted his
comrades to adopt what he regarded as the right attitude towards
13
218
the revolution in Russia, and to bear in mind the international

socialist connexions; to opt for, in case general peace should
prove impossible to achieve (Helphand thought it would), a
separate peace with Russia. He succeeded on all these counts.
The party's enlarged committee (erweiterter Parteiausschuss)
passed a resolution at the meeting on 19 April, which was a
reply to the declaration of the Petrograd Soviet, published on
14 April. It was drafted by Scheidemann and carried unanimously; it accepted the Russian formula of peace without
annexations and indemnities. When the party press published the
resolution the following day, the similarity to the idea of the
Soviet was emphasized. The crucial passage of the declaration
read:'We greet with passionate sympathy the victory of the
Russian revolution, and the reawakening of the international
desire for peace which the revolution has sparked off. We proclaim our agreement with the resolution of the Russian Workers'
and Soldiers' Council, to pave the way for a general peace, without annexations, and indemnities, on the basis of the free development of all nations.'14
While the German socialists agitated for a peace which would
more or less correspond to the Russian views on the subject, the
most important task of Germany's eastern policy was to make it
impossible for the provisional Government in Petrograd to carry
on the war. It was this second objective which came to exercise
the ingenuity of the Imperial Government. After his recent
consultations with the socialists, Helphand was received at the
Foreign Ministry. An audience was arranged for him with
Zimmermann, the State Secretary; it had the highest security
rating. There were no witnesses, and no record of the conversation was taken.
There can be no doubt that Helphand drew the State Secretary's
attention to the advantages of supporting the Bolshevik party.
Lenin was the only Russian party leader whose stand on the
question of peace was firm, and whose organization was disciplined and effective. It could be supported in a variety of ways:
the Bolsheviks needed money for extensive pacifist propaganda
14
Protokoll der Sitzung des erweiterten Parteiausschusses am 18 und 19 April 1917, im Reichstagsgebude zu Berlin, 1917, p. 74.
in the Russian hinterland; the agitation among the front-line

troops, which had been going on for many months, would now
have to be intensified and geared more closely to the Bolshevik
cause. There still existed the danger that a German offensive on
the eastern front would rally the patriotic forces in Russia, and
thus cancel the effect of pacifist propaganda. It would have hit
the Bolsheviks hardest: Helphand therefore must have insisted,
once again, that no offensive should be undertaken within the
next few months. And finally, earlier on in the month, the
Foreign Ministry had asked the Treasury for a further grant of
five million marks for political purposes in Russia: it was the
highest sum of money requested so far, and it was approved on
3 April.15 The ways in which it was going to be used may also
have given Zimmermann and Helphand another subject for conversation. Helphand was the only man in contact with the
Foreign Ministry who dealt in sums of that order. He was much
more cautious now: he signed no receipts, as he had done two
years before.
After concluding the business in Berlin, Helphand travelled to
Copenhagen, and then to Stockholm: he spent the following weeks
commuting between the two Scandinavian capitals. In Stockholm,
he spent most of his time with the members of the Bolshevik
Foreign Mission: indeed, it looked as if he himself was one of
them. It was the only foreign branch of the Bolshevik central
committee in Petrograd; it also served as a propaganda office,
which publicized Bolshevik policy through two German-language
periodicals, the Bote der russischen Revolution and Korrespondenz
Prawda. It was run by Karl Radek, Jakob Frstenberg, and
another Bolshevik of Polish origin, V. V. Vorovski, also known
as Orlovsky.
The last man in this conspiratorial trio, and, for us, the only
unknown quantity, was an engineer by profession, who had been
active as a Bolshevik party worker and journalist in Odessa in the
years 1913 and 1914. When he returned to Moscow he joined the
local branch of the Siemens-Schuckert firm which sent him, in
January 1916, as its representative to Stockholm. He had started
to work with Frstenberg immediately after the March revolution
15
Zeman, op. cit., editorial note, p. 24.
220
in Russia; it is very probable that the two men had been in touch
for some time before the revolution.16 Vorovski may have known
Helphand from the time he spent studying, soon after the turn
of the century, at the Polytechnic in Munich.
Of the three men in the Bolshevik bureau, Radek was the
most active and dominant. He was now in a position to establish the connexions he had always prized so highly. Apart
from Helphand, he got to know Gustav Mayer, who had come to
Stockholm on an official mission for the German Government; a
ubiquitous character called Goldberg, who was acting as an agent
for Erzberger, the Reichstag deputy; and Karl Moor, a Swiss
socialist who was concurrently working for the Swiss, the
Austrian, and the German Governments. Through his contacts,
Radek let the German Government know that the victory of the
Bolsheviks over the provisional Government was only a question
of time. And he told everybody who cared to listen that he was
not looking for a flat in Stockholm for the winter, as he wanted to
return to Petrograd immediately after the Bolshevik victory.17
Apart from propaganda and intelligence activities, this carefully selected, all-Polish Bolshevik team served another function.
It was used for the purposes of channelling money into the
Bolshevik party coffers in Russia. Helphand was the mainif
not the onlysource of this munificence; if the Bolsheviks
thought that Helphand still owed them money from the Gorki
royalties, it was now being repaid to them, and in the most
generous manner.
All the three Poles in Stockholm were experienced underground workers, who continued to combat the provisional
Government with the means they had employed against the
Tsarist regime. They were now in a favoured position. The
Germans put their diplomatic communications system at their
disposal; the Bolshevik mission also occasionally used the official
Russian diplomatic bag for communications with Petrograd. In
addition, there existed the well-tried connexions between Russia
16
In the introduction to Vorovski's collected works, based on an essay by Frstenberg,

there is no mention of Vorovski's activities during the year 1916: cf. V. V. Vorovski,
Sochineniya, Moscow, 1933. cf. also N. Piashev, Vorovski, Moscow, 1959, pp. 184-5.
17
G. Mayer, Vom Journalisten zum Historiker der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, Zrich, 1949,
pp. 276-9.
and Scandinavia which had been established by Helphand's

Copenhagen export company, of which Frstenberg was the
managing director. Radek and his friends commanded an impressive variety of means of communication: if these failed, the
Bolshevik mission was quite capable of establishing connexions
of its own with Petrograd.
Lenin trusted his political bureau in Stockholm implicitly. A
large number of messages were exchanged between Petrograd and
Stockholm; from the very beginning, the question of money for
the Bolshevik party occupied a prominent place in the correspondence. In his first letter to Frstenberg, written a few days
after his arrival in Petrograd, Lenin complained that 'until now
. . . we have received no money from you', and he asked the
Foreign Mission to exercise 'every care and caution in your
relationships'. In the second letter, Lenin was able to acknowledge
the receipt of 2,000 roubles from Kozlovsky, the Polish lawyer
and socialist, and one of Helphand's contact men.18
Early in May, the mission of Borbjerg to Petrograd imposed
itself, once again, on Helphand's attention: it appeared to have
somewhat complicated matters. Helphand had organized it before
his talk with Radek, and now he behaved as if he wished he had
not done so.
After successfully overcoming certain difficulties at the Russian frontier, Borbjerg reached Petrograd towards the end of
April. He met Cheidse, Kerensky, and Skobelev, the leaders of
the Soviet, and then was invited by its executive committee to a
general discussion which took place on 6 May. Two points were
discussed: the message from the German party, and the possibility of a general socialist conference.19 Borbjerg was unable to
do much more than stress the goodwill of the German party.
The Russians raised the question of Germany's readiness to
apply the right of self-determination to Alsace-Lorraine; they
asked the Danish emissary whether the German socialists were
acting on behalf of the majority of the Reichstag or only for
themselves. Borbjerg gave a satisfactory answer to neither of
these questions.
18
19
Proletarskaya revolyutsiya, Moscow, 1923, No. 9, pp. 227-8.

N. Avdeev, Revolutsiya 1917 goda, Moscow, 1923, vol. 2, p. 64.
222
After a few days' wait, Borbjerg was told that the Soviet
favoured the idea of a socialist peace conference, which should,
however, be summoned by the Petrograd Workers' and Soldiers'
Council itself. This announcement produced a difficult situation:
since the end of April, the Dutch and the Scandinavian socialists
had themselves been preparing such a conference, which was to
take place in Stockholm in the summer. Nor did Borbjerg succeed
in getting the Bolsheviks to agree to take part in the Stockholm
conference. During the Dane's stay in Petrograd, the ail-Russian
conference of the Bolshevik party passed a resolution which opposed participation; for good measure, the resolution denounced
Borbjerg as an 'agent' of the Imperial German Government and
of the German and Scandinavian 'socialist chauvinists'.20
On 10 May Borbjerg returned to Copenhagen, where Helphand met him soon after his arrival. Although the Dane was in a
more optimistic mood than his performance in Petrograd warranted, Helphand was unable to be either impressed or interested.
He was too deeply committed to the support of the Bolshevik line.
He observed the preparations, which the Dutch-Scandinavian
committee were making for a socialist conference in Stockholm,
with growing displeasure. They had advanced so far that, on
21 May, several preliminary conferences with a number of
national delegations were opened; their organizers hoped that
they would be able to come to an agreement with the Petrograd
Soviet on its participation. After discussions with the Bulgarian,
Finnish, Austrian, Czech, and Hungarian delegations, the DutchScandinavian committee were to receive the representatives of the
German majority party on 4 June.
Helphand kept his distance from all this activity. He did
nothing to give the conference public support: Die Glocke, which
usually contained a comment by its publisher on every important
development in the socialist movement, was silent. The failure
of the Borbjerg mission had brought home to him the deep
divisions on this problem inside the Soviet itself: he knew well
of the patriotic disposition of many of the Russian socialists, who
supported the policy of the continuation of the war. It was not a
socialist conference, but the achievement of political power by
20
ibid., p. 258.
the Bolsheviks, that promised to fulfil everything he expected the

Russian revolution to accomplish. He would do nothing to
jeopardize his policy of maximum support for the Bolsheviks.
He therefore faced the enthusiasm of the German delegation to
Stockholmit consisted of such pillars of the party as Ebert,
Scheidemann, David, Hermann Mller, Carl Legien, and Gustav
Bauerwith misgivings. The delegates broke off their journey
in Copenhagen on 30 May; there were conversations with
Stauning, the chairman of the Danish party, and with Borbjerg;
Helphand gave a very good party for his comrades and singing
and dancing went on until late at night. But when the delegation resumed its journey two days later, Helphand showed no
desire to accompany it to Stockholm. Instead of going to the
conference, he left for Marienbad, to nurse his rheumatism for
a few weeks.
His interest in the conference was aroused only when the
arrival in Stockholm of the Soviet representatives was announced.
It was a mixed delegation, consisting of J. P. Goldenberg, a former
Bolshevik, Smirnov and Ehrlich, two right-wing Mensheviks, and
Rusanov, the Social Revolutionary. They came to Sweden early
in July, about the same time as Helphand returned to Denmark
from Marienbad. He then went over to Stockholm, where he had
confidential talks with the Russians on 13 and 14 July. Two days
later, Helphand reported on the conversation to the party
executive in Berlin. The Russians, he confided to his comrades,
had talked Very sensibly', and they were determined to prevent
any 'useless discussion about war guilt'. They had, however,
stressed the fact that the decision of the coming conference
should be binding for all parties, including the German.21
Helphand knew that the Germans were disinclined to accept
this condition and he may have intended to warn them of
the futility of the conference. Nevertheless, for the time being, the
party executive and Helphand had no interests in common. The
majority of socialists were too deeply committed to a vague concept of peace: their interest in the Stockholm conference, and
their participation in the Reichstag peace resolutionpublished
the day after their talks with Helphandwere sufficient proofs
21
E. David, Diary, entry for 16 July 1917. Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
224
of this. Helphand knew that they would have no understanding

of the practical implications of his Bolshevik policy. He told
them nothing about it.
Instead, he visited the Foreign Ministry on 17 July. The
diplomats were more understanding than his socialist comrades,

and Helphand, in return, was more informative. The influence
of Lenin, Helphand said, continued to increase; the present
Russian military offensive was carried out under British and
American pressure, as it had been made the condition of further
supplies of money and goods. Nevertheless Helphand said, as
reported in the memorandum, 'disappointment had already set in,
and would result in a further softening-up of the army. This had
already reached such a degree, even before the offensive, that the
army, through the person of Brusilov, had said that the collapse
of the armed forces could only be prevented by an immediate
offensive. In addition to this, there was the poor harvest. The
Russians living in Stockholm had claimed that only 30 per cent
of the area being farmed before the war was under cultivation
now. Helphand regards this as an exaggeration, but thinks that
the total could hardly, in fact, be more than 50 per cent.'22
Helphand had good reasons for his optimism. In Russia,
increase in anarchy and material privations went hand in hand;
at the front, where German propaganda was run on the same

lines as Bolshevik agitationthis fact was commented on by a
number of independent witnesses who visited the front in the
summer of 1917the army was melting away under the eyes of

its commanders. Helphand had told Brockdorff-Rantzau in
April that it would take a few months to reach the peak of
anarchy in Russia. He was convinced that no power in Petrograd could prevent the Bolsheviks in their work of destruction.
He was now more cautious than in 1915, and he committed
himself to no precise dates: but he knew full well that sooner or
later the Bolsheviks would grasp at supreme power in the state.
After the consultations in the Foreign Ministry, Helphand
made an unpredictable move. Instead of returning to Scandinavia,
he left for Switzerland on 22 July. He said he had some business
to do there, and that the country would be better for his health;
22
in Scandinavia too many spies, agents, and hangers-on were

pestering the socialists who had assembled in Stockholm for the
conference. Helphand, however, had better reasons than that for
wishing to be out of the way. During the past few days, a storm
had been gathering over his head.
On 16 and 17 July, while Helphand was assuring the diplomats in Berlin of the eventual victory of the Bolsheviks, Lenin
and his party organized a rising against the provisional Government in Petrograd. It was suppressed with some difficulty,
and Kerensky's Government decided to settle accounts with the
Bolsheviks once and for all. On 18 July, the Ministry of Justice
published a series of documents which were intended to prove
that Lenin and the Bolshevik party were guilty of high treason.
They were produced as evidence that the Bolsheviks had received
money from the German Government; the whole operation was
aimed at discrediting the Bolsheviks in the eyes of the public.
Business telegrams to and from Frstenberg, Kozlovsky, and
Sumenson, the Petrograd representative of the Nestle firm, and
Lenin's telegrams to Frstenberg and Kollontay, a Russian lady
socialist who later served for fifteen years as the Soviet Ambassador to Sweden, were published. The curtain was rung up on
a major political scandal.
On the following day19 Julythe headlines of the Russian
patriotic press proclaimed Lenin's treason to the nation. The
campaign was led by two journalists, Alexinski and Burtsev, who
had accused the Bolsheviks of treasonable activities as early as
1914; Burtsev had known and hated Helphand for a long time.
And it was Helphand who now appeared as the central figure in
the drama, as the man who organized this treasonable co-operation between the Bolsheviks and the German Government. He
appeared as a sinister background figure, who had used his
business relations with Jakob Frstenberg to the benefit of the
Bolshevik party coffers.
'Parvus is not an agent provocateur', Burtsev wrote on 20 July
in Milyukov's newspaper Rech, che is more than that: he is an
agent of Wilhelm II.' Lenin, for very good reasons, had always
managed to avoid the use of this term in his public pronouncements on Helphand.
226
The press campaign was followed by legal proceedings against

the Bolsheviks. The case for the prosecution was that Frstenberg and Alexandra Kollontay had transferred the money received
from Helphand from the Nye Bank in Stockholm to a special
account of Sumenson's at the Siberian Bank in Petrograd, an
account to which the Bolsheviks had access.23 The main charges
against the accused were contained in the following passage:
The investigation established that Yakov (cover-name 'Kuba') HaneckiFrstenberg, while residing in Copenhagen during the war, had close
financial connexions with Parvus, an agent of the German government.
Moreover the activity of Parvus as a German and Austrian agent was
directed towards the defeat of Russia and the separation of the Ukraine.
. . . From numerous telegrams in the hands of the legal authorities it
is established that a constant and extensive correspondence was carried
on between Sumenson, Ulyanov (Lenin), Kollontay, and Kozlovsky
residing in Petrograd, on the one hand, and Frstenberg (Hanecki) and
Helphand (Parvus), on the other. Although this correspondence refers
to commercial deals, shipment of all sorts of goods, and money transactions, it offers sufficient reasons to conclude that this correspondence
was a cover-up for relations of an espionage character.24
On the basis of the available evidence, the prosecutor regarded

the chargethat the accused co-operated with Germany in order
to diminish Russia's fighting poweras proven.
For this purpose and with the money received . . . they organized
propaganda among the civilian population and in the army, appealing to
them to refuse immediately to continue military operations against the
enemy; also, towards the same end, to organize in Petrograd, from 16 to
18 July 1917, an armed insurrection against the existing order. . . .25
Thanks to the inevitable leak from the Ministry of Justice,

Lenin and Zinoviev were able to go into hiding in time. Kozlovsky,
Sumenson, and later, Trotsky, were arrested. It was like old
times; the whole Bolshevik party went underground. Its very
existence was now at stake, and a determined effort was made to
clear its name. In Listok Pravda, which was then published instead
23
24
R. P. Browder and A. F. Kerensky (editors), The Provisional Government 1917, Stanford, 1962, vol. 3, pp. 1464-5.
25
ibid., pp. 1375-6.
ibid., p. 1376.
of Pravda proper, the Bolshevik central committee nervously

defended itself, on 19 July, against the 'unheard-of accusations'
against Lenin, and against the 'monstrous libel' from the ranks of
the counter-revolution. The central committee demanded that
the provisional Government and the Soviet should immediately
order an investigation which would clear up 'all the circumstances
of the foul conspiracy by the pogromists and hired slanderers
against the honour and life of the leaders of the working class'.26
Trotsky, who was suspect because of his friendship with
Helphand, dissociated himself from his erstwhile comrade in a
newspaper article as early as 21 July:27 his previous attacks on
Helphandthe 'obituary' in Nashe Slovo, and the warning against
the Copenhagen Institute in Humanitcould now be used as
valuable alibis. The most interesting denial, however, came from
the Bolshevik Foreign Mission in Stockholm. It appeared in
Korrespondenz Prawda on 31 July, and it had the Radek touch.
The charges against the Bolsheviks were described as a plot,
cooked up with the help both of documents of the old Okhrana
the Tsarist secret serviceand the forgeries perpetrated by
the 'Alexinsky canaille'.
The flat denial and the vitriolic abuse were, of course, to be
expected: the line Radek took on Helphand, the central figure in
the affair, was unique. Radek pointed out that, throughout the
war, there had existed political differences between Helphand,
the socialist-chauvinist, and the Bolsheviks. They had also kept
out of his Copenhagen Institute, because they did not want to be
tarred with the same brush as Helphand. Nevertheless, the close
relationship between Helphand and Frstenberg was known in
socialist circles, and it had to be explained away.
Even for Radek, this was a difficult task. When Frstenberg
arrived in Copenhagen, Radek wrote, he wanted to avoid joining
the Copenhagen Institute for political reasons, and he grasped
the opportunity of working in Helphand's business:
1. Because he then regarded Parvus as a personally honest man (and he
still does so now). 2. Because he could then not only support his
family, but also because he could give powerful financial help to the
Polish party organization in Russian Poland. . . . Hanecki was not
26
cf. Browder and Kerensky, op. cit., vol. 3, p. 1366.
27
Novaya ZJiizn.
228
bound to Helphand by any political ties, but through the support of the
Polish party press and organization, which was conducting a sharp
struggle against the German forces of occupation, and which publicly
declared itself in agreement with Liebknecht: he was actually working
against the policy of Parvus.
Despite his determined attempt at obfuscation, Radek revealed

a point of extreme relevance: that money had been siphoned off
from Helphand's business for political purposes. Radek was, of
course, unable to add that the Polish party was a creation of
Lenin, and that it stood in such close connexion with the
Russian Bolsheviks that it was difficult to tell the two organizations apart.
The members of the Bolshevik Foreign Mission regarded Helphand in a more favourable light than was customary among their
comrades. The Korrespondent Prawda stated that Helphand
could be described neither as an Austrian nor as a German agent,
and then it went on publicly to correct Lenin's verdict that
Helphand was a socialist chauvinist. Lenin, it was pointed out,
had been convinced that Helphand's business activity had conditioned his war policy. There were, however, many Bolsheviks
who regarded Helphand as a man unable to sell himself. Frstenberg in particular, it was said, thought that Helphand's attitude
to the war was based on his socialist ideology, and that the
revolutionary theory he had developed before 1914 was the key
to the understanding of his ideas during the war. Only history
would show, Radek wrote, 'who was right in his verdict on Parvus
as a man: Lenin or Hanecki'.
This was a rhetorical question. Neither Lenin nor the members
of the Stockholm Mission were inclined to reveal the true facts.
The Bolsheviks had to defend themselves against the accusations
of the provisional Government, and they had to make a decision
as to the degree of whitewashing of Helphand they could safely
risk. They were fighting for the existence of their party. From his
hiding-place in Finland, Lenin proceeded with great caution.
His declaration, also published in Stockholm, contained no
comment on Helphand's personality.28 The Bolshevik leader was
28
Bote der russischen Revolution, No. 2, 22 September 1917.
XI. von Khlmann, State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry, and

Count Czernin, Austro-Hunganan Foreign Minister, 1917
XII. Philipp Scheidemann speaking outside the Reichstag, 1919
content to refer to his review of the first issue of Die Glocke in

1915, and to deny the accusation that he had received money
from Helphand. He was not yet ready to pass the final verdict.
The time was certainly as inopportune for Helphand's rehabilitation as a socialist and revolutionary, as for his denunciation as an
agent of the German Government. There existed a momentary
community of interest between the two men, and Lenin decided
to postpone the final settlement of accounts, one way or the other,
with Helphand.
When the blow fell upon the Bolshevik organization, Helphand
was being rather elusive in Switzerland. There were a lot of
people looking for him. When Frstenberg and Vorovski asked
him, in telegrams of 25 July (the Bolshevik Mission was using the
German diplomatic network of communications) to return to
Stockholm at once, and to send a declaration on oath that he had
not let the Bolsheviks have any money through Frstenberg or
anyone else, Romberg, the German Minister to Berne, had to
report that he had been unable to run Helphand to ground. Only
two valuable days later, on 27 July, Helphand was discovered
staying at a luxury hotel, and the telegrams from Stockholm were
handed over to him.
Helphand's reply did not go through diplomatic channels, but
there is no reason to assume that he did not comply with his
friends' request. He knew that the Bolshevik party would have to
prepare itself for the eventual court proceedings in Petrograd,
and he did as much for it as he possibly could. As early as
8 August, his publishing house in Berlin issued a pamphlet by
Helphand, entitled 'My Reply to Kerensky and Co.'. It read like
a Bolshevik propaganda tract: Helphand avoided dealing with the
main chargethat he had acted as an intermediary between the
Bolsheviks and the Imperial German Governmentputting his
defence in still more general terms than the Russian defendants
had done. He wrote: 'I have always supported, and will go on
doing so, the Russian revolutionary movement in so far as it is
socialist, with every means at my disposal. You lunatics, why do
you worry whether I have given money to Lenin? Lenin and
others, whose names you give, have never demanded or received
any money from me either as a loan or as a present. But I have
M.R.-Q
230
given them, and many others, something more effective than

money or dynamite. I am one of those men who have given
spiritual nourishment to the revolutionary determination of the
Russian proletariat, which you are now trying, in vain, to destroy.'
In the circumstances, neither the Bolsheviks nor Helphand
could do more than issue flat denials of the charges by the provisional Government. Passions aroused by the war were running
high, and neither Lenin nor Helphand could expect the prosecution to take into account the subtleties of the situation: that Lenin
had used German help for his own purposes, that there existed
no agreement between him and the German Government, and
that both he and Helphand were pursuing independent policies
of their own. In London, after all, Roger Casement had been
sentenced to death on less weighty evidence.
Nor could the Russian provisional Government know anything
about the messages the German diplomats were exchanging at the
time. On 29 September, Khlmann, who had succeeded Zimnaermann in August as State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry,
telegraphed the Ministry's Liaison Officer at the General Headquarters on the subject of subversive activities in Russia. 6Our
first interest, in these activities, was to further nationalist and
separatist endeavours as far as possible and to give strong support
to the revolutionary elements. We have now been engaged in
these activities for some time, and in complete agreement with the
Political Section of the General Staff in Berlin (Capt. von Hlsen).
Our work together has shown tangible results. The Bolshevik
movement could never have attained the scale or the influence
which it has today without our continual support. There is every
indication that the movement will continue to grow, and the same
is true also of the Finnish and Ukrainian independence movements.'29
Two months later, Khlmann spelled out the effects of the
policy in more detail, again for the benefit of the General Headquarters : 'Russia appeared to be the weakest link in the enemy
chain. The task therefore was gradually to loosen it, and, when
possible, to remove it. This was the purpose of the subversive
activity we caused to be carried out in Russia behind the
29
Revolution in Russia
231
frontin the first place promotion of separatist tendencies and

support of the Bolsheviks. It was not until the Bolsheviks had
received from us a steady flow of funds through various channels
and under different labels that they were in a position to be able
to build up their main organ, Pravda, to conduct energetic
propaganda and appreciably to extend the originally narrow basis
of their party.'30
Khlmann was quite right in his forecast that the influence of
the Bolsheviks would continue to grow. The provisional Government proved itself unable to destroy the party's underground
network; the published evidence against the Bolsheviks was too
sketchy, and the prosecution did not press the case beyond the
preliminary charges. Although Helphand was acting as the main
link between the Bolsheviks and the Imperial German Government, this was not the only connexion available to Berlin in the
summer of 1917. A part of the funds allocated for subversion in
RussiaEduard Bernstein later estimated the total sum at the
rate of fifty million gold marks: an estimate of thirty million
appears to be nearer the truthmay well have been handed over
direct to the Bolshevik Foreign Mission by the German Legation
in Stockholm; the Swiss socialist Karl Moor, who was working
for the German Government under the cover name Baier, had
his own contacts in Russia among the Bolsheviks, and he could
also have been helpful in this respect.
The only man who knew the whole story was Minister Diego
von Bergen, who dealt with subversion in Russia in the political
section of the Foreign Ministry. Bergen was free of the political
enthusiasms so dear to Brockdorff-Rantzau; he was a reliable civil
servant who served, after the war, both the Weimar and the
Hitler regimes as the Ambassador to the Holy See. He combined
efficiency with reticence: the draft of the above-quoted December
telegram from Khlmann to the General Headquarters, for which
Bergen was responsible, was the only minor indiscretion he ever
committed.
Despite the manner in which the charges of the provisional
Government against the Bolsheviks petered out, their aftermath
was disastrous for Russia's politics. The rift between the
30
232
Bolsheviks and the moderate socialist groups deepened, and the

hostility between the Bolsheviks and the provisional Government
became clearly irreconcilable. Early in 1918, the charges against
the Bolsheviks were again taken up in the forged documents
assembled by Edgar Sisson, a gullible American journalist in
Russia: an incident which marred the relations between Washington and the Soviets in their formative stage. The affair of the
German subsidies proved the conspiratorial efficiency of the
Bolsheviks on the one hand, and, on the other, the inability of
the provisional Government to rule the country: its unfinished,
inconclusive nature affected political behaviour as much as
historical writing.
In the summer of 1917, the only outside assistance the Bolsheviks had received had come from Helphand: the logic of the
situation demanded that he should give support to Lenin and his
party. He replied to Kerensky's charges in a tone reminiscent of
his early controversies, when he was editing the Schsische
Arbeiterzeitung. His attacks were directed against the majority
of the Soviet, and against the socialist ministers in the provisional
Government in particular: they had not summoned the Constituent Assembly, they had proved incapable of solving the
land question, they had not achieved peace: 'Instead of peacea
new mass of victims, instead of landtaxes, instead of democracyautocracy! Instead of one Tsarmany small ones.'31
Helphand was now gambling va banque. After vacillating for
many years in his attitudes to Lenin, he now staked everything
on the trump card of Bolshevism. It was in this sense that
the Bolsheviks themselves understood Helphand's actions. They
expressed the wish that Helphand's answer to Kerensky should
be given wide publicity: Brockdorff-Rantzau was, as usual, ready
to oblige. On 16 August, he requested the Foreign Ministry to
publicize Helphand's leaflet through the Wolffsche Telegraphen
Bureau, the official news agency.32 There was, however, a limit
beyond which the Foreign Ministry would not go in assisting the
spread of Bolshevik propaganda. Bergen thought the comment in
Vorwrts on 14 August sufficient; he was, however, willing to
31
Parvus, Meine Antwort an Kerenski und Co., Berlin, 1917, p. 3.
32 Telegram No. 1060, in WK 2 geh.
organize further publicity for Helphand's leaflet in Switzerland

and Sweden.33
Although the sympathetic leading article in Vorwrts stressed
the fact that Helphand had turned the tables on the provisional
Government, and put it 'in the dock', the German party was by
no means united on this issue. On 20 August Cohen-Reuss wrote,
in the same newspaper, that Helphand's views were 'unintelligible
and dangerous'. Helphand's reply to Kerensky contained, in
Reuss's opinion, 'senseless suspicions against the leading figures
of the Russian revolution', and it therefore made no real contribution to the cause of understanding between Russia and
Germany. The German party, Reuss thought, had every reason
to disagree with Helphand, who had made an 'ill-disguised
attempt to broadcast Bolshevik propaganda'. But Cohen-Reuss's
was an isolated voice: no other German socialist hinted at the
deeper implications of Helphand's policy.
Early in the autumn, Helphand was still lying low. It would
have been very unwise for him to surface in Scandinavia. His
presence there would only have nourished the rumours of his
secret connexions with the Bolsheviks; in addition, he had been
getting too much undesirable publicity there, for yet another
reason: because of Helphand's coal business, the Danish trade
unions had also become the target of vigorous attacks. In the
middle of October he therefore quietly returned to Switzerland
after a brief stay in Berlin. He appeared unconcerned with the
commotion he had caused, patiently biding his time. This state
of suspended activity was unusual for Helphand. He of course
knew that he must do nothing to jeopardize the position of the
Bolsheviks still further; there was, however, another reason why
he was letting events take their course.
He had done everything he could to influence Germany's
policy towards Russia. He had even secured the services of a man
whom he could trust to act as a high-level public relations officer.
Victor Naumann had been introduced to Helphand by Adolf
Mller, early in 1917: without an official position, he exercised
considerable influence. The son of a Protestant middle-class
family in Berlin, he had sought success as a dramatist after his
33
Telegram No. 606 of 18 August 1917, in WK 2 geh.
234
studies in Freiburg and Leipzig. As a dramatist, Naumann was a

failure; at the turn of the century he became a Catholic convert
and settled in Munich. He wrote a variety of Catholic apologia
and through them he gained access to the court circles in the
Bavarian capital. He also was a close friend of Count Hertling,
who was soon to become the Reich Chancellor.
Helphand regarded these connexions as highly valuable and he
started paying Naumann, in the summer of 1917, a retaining fee
for his services as a lobbyist and informant.34 Naumann came to
Marienbad in June, while Helphand was staying there: he was
instructed to make Helphand's policies towards Russia known
in the right quarters. Naumann passed them on to Count Czernin,
the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister; he talked about them
to the German and the Bavarian Crown Princes, as well as to
General Ludendorff.35 At the end of October, Naumann then
accompanied his employer to Vienna in order to arrange a
meeting there with Count Czernin. Before a date could be fixed
for the audience, the first news reached the Habsburg capital of
the successful Bolshevik coup d'etat.
34
35
Nachlass Helphand, Rep. 92, No. 7.

V. Naumann, Dokumente und Argumente, Berlin, 1928, pp. 257-60.
11
Dirty Hands
In Vienna, Helphand witnessed the great enthusiasm
with which the workers greeted the news of the Bolshevik revolution. The socialist newspapers celebrated the 'revolution of peace'
in Petrograd, and a mass meeting on the following Sunday,
11 November, acclaimed the events in Russia as 'a new epoch
in the struggle for the liberation of the international proletariat'.
On 14 November Helphand was received by Count Czernin:
on the same day, soon after the audience at Ballhausplatz, he
received an important communication from the Bolshevik Mission
in Stockholm. Radek and Frstenberg asked Helphand to return
to Sweden at once: it was said in their telegram that the Bolshevik Government urgently needed support from the socialist
parties in Germany and Austria-Hungary. 'Great demonstrations
and strikes', the Bolsheviks in Stockholm telegraphed Helphand,
were highly desirable.1
Helphand left Vienna at once and broke off his journey in
Berlin: he was expected in the Foreign Ministry. The diplomats
were highly gratified by the turn of events in Russia. The
Bolsheviks, though victorious, were by no means securely entrenched in their positions of power: they still needed support,
and the Imperial German Government was by no means averse
to giving it. On 9 November the Treasury allowed a further
fifteen million marks for political purposes in Russia: Bergen
in the Foreign Ministry knew that the Bolshevik Government
had to struggle cwith great financial difficulties', and that it was
therefore desirable to supply it with money. For the same reason,
'a further two million for known purposes' were transferred to
1
P. Scheidemann, Memoiren eines Sozialdemokraten, vol. 2, p. 122.
236
the Legation in Stockholm, immediately after the Bolshevik

coup
d'tat in Petrograd.2
In his conversations with the Foreign Ministry officials. Helphand drew an optimistic picture of future developments in
Russia. He urged the German Government to respond warmly
to the Bolshevik peace declaration of 9 November: Germany must
adhere to the formula of 'no annexations and indemnities' in order
to strengthen the peace movement in Russia, and to bring about
peace negotiations. He pointed out that a favourable reply from
Berlin would strongly influence public opinion, and that it was
very likely to result in the complete collapse of the Russian Army.
The Russian front was held together only by the fear of a German
offensive. And, most important, Germany's readiness to conclude
peace would necessarily strengthen the position of the Bolsheviks,
the most outspoken partisans of peace.
Helphand made quite clear his opinion that, according to
available information, the position of the Bolsheviks was far from
secure. Their Government was not supported by the majority of
the people: 'it was the victory of one minority over another
minority'; there existed the threat of Kerensky's armies as well
as a crisis in food supplies; the land problem was also entirely
beyond the control of the Bolsheviks: 'they simply let events take
their course'. In addition, during the struggles of the past months,
the party had to carry with it the 'dark masses'Helphand
avoided the pertinent Marxist term Lumpenproletariatwhich

were now threatening the stability of the new order.3
Because of the weakness of its position, the Bolshevik Government was forced to pursue, in Helphand's words, a 'simple
policy'. Only by concluding peace could it consolidate and win
the national assembly, which was to meet soon, over to its side.
The reason why Lenin's Government had so far maintained a
reserved attitude towards peace negotiations was, according to
Helphand, that the Bolsheviks were still awaiting revolutionary
developments in Austria-Hungary and in Germany. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks entertained 'no particular enmity,
2
3
Zeman, op. cit., documents Nos. 75, 92, 72, etal.

Helphand's memorandum for Bussche, the Under State Secretary in the Foreign
Ministry, in WK 2.
Dirty Hands
237
especially towards the German government'. Helphand pointed

to the fact that the Bolshevik leaders had gone through the school
of German Social Democracyhe did not think it necessary to
spell out the useful services the German Government had performedand 'when they have renounced the adventurous
elements in their plans, then they will have to rediscover their
bonds with German Social Democracy and with German civilization'. Indeed, after the successful putsch the large pro-German
group inside the Bolshevik party had dared to come into the open
again. 'In the ranks of the leaders themselves, in the closest
proximity of Lenin and Trotsky, there are people who kept up
their contacts with German Social Democracy throughout the
war.'
As far as the concrete conditions of peace between the Soviets
and Germany were concerned, Helphand was very reserved.
Although he encouraged the diplomats to regard 'cessions of
territory as not impossible', he suggested that they would be of
value to Germany only if they were carried out with the 'unconditional approval' of the Bolshevik Government. He regarded
economic relations and preferential trade treatment as much
more valuable than carving off slices of Russia: 'The Russian
market and participation in the industrialization of Russia are
more important to us than any transfers of territory.'
Helphand's proposals on the political treatment of the
Bolshevik regime were cautious: as far as he was concerned, the
diplomats had fulfilled their function. He was now moving away
from them.
His second appointment in Berlin was with Ebert and
Scheidemann. Now that the Bolsheviks were in power, the cooperation of the socialists, Helphand thought, would prove more
useful than that of the diplomats. But neither of the leaders of the
majority socialists showed enthusiasm for the Bolshevik request
for 'great demonstrations and strikes' in Germany. They maintained that the party could not, at the present moment, stab the
Imperial Government in the back. Scheidemann and Ebert agreed,
however, that they were ready to agitate for a negotiated peace
during their forthcoming propaganda tour through Germany.4
4
P. Scheidemann, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 123.
238
The party leaders then reached agreement with Helphand on

the following procedure: Helphand should travel to Stockholm,
in order to transmit the congratulations of the German party to
the Bolshevik Foreign Mission. He should inform the Bolshevik
representatives of the intention of the executive to pass, at mass
meetings at Dresden and Barmen, a resolution of sympathy with
the Bolshevik victory. Helphand was to put the draft of the
resolution before the Bolshevik bureau for approval; in addition,
he was to ask the Bolsheviks for an immediate reply, so that it
could be read to the Dresden and Barmen meetings.
The greatest possible speed was essential, and, after breaking
his journey at Copenhagen for a hurried consultation with
Brockdorff-Rantzau, Helphand arrived in Stockholm on 17
November. He met the members of the Bolshevik Mission on the
same day.
He found them in high spirits. For weeks they had been under
constant fire from their political opponents, and the news of the
Bolshevik victory came as a great release to them. Frstenberg's
position was the most exposed, and he had suffered more than
his comrades; he had left for Russia shortly before Helphand's
arrival. It was therefore Radek and Vorovski whom Helphand
congratulated, going on to ask them to approve the resolution
that was to be put before the mass meetings in Germany. It read:
'The meeting congratulates the workers on their achievements in
the Russian revolution, and wishes them continued success in
their difficult task. It assures the Russian comrades of its solidarity, and agrees with the demand for an immediate armistice
to pave the way for a democratic peace which will insure
free economic development for Germany and all other countries.'5
Apart from one minor correctionRadek asked Helphand to
insert after the word 'solidarity', the phrase 'promises them
energetic support'there was no objection, as far as the Bolsheviks were concerned, against the resolution. As to their reply,
Helphand agreed that it should be addressed to both factions
of the German socialist party, the U.S.P.D. as well as the S.P.D.,
and that it should read:
5
Vorwrts, 19 November 1917.
Dirty Hands
239
The revolutionary movement in Russia has entered a new phase. The

Russian workers and soldiers have seized power from the hands of those
who abandoned the peace aims and the social goals of the revolution.
They have themselves assumed power, and they propose immediate
negotiations for a peace without annexations or indemnities, and on the
basis of the self-determination of nations. In Russia and abroad, however, this peace of the peoples will be opposed by capitalist forces.
Before us, there is still a long struggle, which can be concluded victoriously only by international action of the proletariat. The Bolshevik representatives abroad have received the assurance of the
French, the Austrian and the German Social Democrat workers that the
Russian proletariat can rely on their vigorous support. They have
transmitted this news to the Russian workers, and they send brotherly
greetings to all Social Democratic workers who are righting for a
peoples' peace. They hope that the fratricide will be stopped by the
united struggle of the international proletariat, and that this will lay the
foundations for the realization of socialism.6
This much Helphand had agreed to do for Ebert and Scheidemann. But he wanted to talk to Radek privately, and he had an
unexpected request to make. To Radek's astonishment, Helphand
offered his services to the Soviet Government, and expressed the
wish to ask for Lenin's permission to return to Russia. He was
quite aware of the fact, Helphand said, that his war policy was
suspect in Russian party circles. He was therefore prepared to
defend his actions before a workers' court whose verdict he would
accept. He then asked Radek to put his request personally before
Lenin, and to tell him of Lenin's decision.7
Radek was profoundly impressed, and at once set out on a trip
to Petrograd. On the way he caught up with Frstenberg: as
soon as they reached the Finnish frontier on 18 November, they
sent the following telegram to Lenin: 'We are travelling by special
train to Petrograd. We have a very important message. Request
immediate consultation.'8
With equal alacrity, Helphand set about the transmission of
6
7
Vorwrts, 20 November 1917.

Pravda, 14 December 1924.
Dela Naroda, No. 219, quoted in P. S. Melgunov, Zjolotoi nemetskii klyuch, p. 150.
240
the Bolshevik message to Berlin. Immediately after his conversation with Radek, he visited the German Legation in Stockholm.
He was received by Counsellor Kurt Riezler: he had met Riezler
for the first time in March 1915, when Helphand presented his
revolutionary programme to the Foreign Ministry. The two men
were not on the best of terms.
Dr. Kurt Riezler had been appointed to Stockholm in July

1917, where he assisted the Minister in all matters concerning
socialist peace efforts and subversion in Russia. He regarded
Helphand as no more than a valuable agent: he wanted to use
Helphand but without allowing him any freedom of action. In
Riezler's viewwhich differed from that of Brockdorff-Rantzau
Helphand should confine himself to carrying out the instructions of the Foreign Ministry. He strongly disapproved of
Helphand's recent mission of mediation between the Bolsheviks
and the German Social Democrats.
Since the mass meetings at Dresden and Barmen were to take
place on the following day, 18 November, Helphand asked Riezler
to transmit the Bolshevik declaration to Berlin at once. He
stressed the need that the message should reach both factions
of the party, Haase's U.S.P.D. as well as Ebert's and Scheidemann's S.P.D. Riezler promised to comply with Helphand's
request.
He made, however, an important alteration. Since the U.S.P.D.
stood in opposition to the Government, Riezler abbreviated the
address so that the message should reach the majority socialists
only. Nevertheless, when the telegram arrived at the Foreign
Ministry, the diplomats thought that the Bolshevik reply contained more explosive material than was good for the mass
meetings at Dresden and Barmen. Bergen therefore made arrangements that it should be passed on to Scheidemann and Ebert only
after the meetings on 18 November. The interests of the diplomats
and those of Helphand no longer tallied.
The leaders of both the socialist parties, Scheidemann and
Haase, made representations to the Foreign Ministry. Khlmann
simply ignored them, and proceeded to rebuke Riezler for having
agreed to send the telegram through diplomatic channels at all.
There was no point in having a code, Khlmann telegraphed
Dirty Hands
241
Stockholm, if it were used for transmitting messages of 'private,

especially non-German origin'.9
As a result of this episode, Helphand became the target of
criticism for the second time in the same year. In diplomatic
circles in Stockholm his mission was regarded as the result of his
megalomania, of his desire to play an important role at any price.
In the Reichstag in Berlin, the leader of the minority socialists,
Hugo Haase, sharply attacked the choice of Helphand for so
delicate a mission. Haase thought it suspicious that the S.P.D.
approached the Bolsheviks in this manner: it was objectionable
to the German proletariat, Haase told the deputies, that a man
like Helphand, who had made a fortune by war speculation, and
who had become a German citizen in the most curious circumstances in the middle of the war, should be sent to negotiate with
the Bolsheviks.10 There was nothing much Scheidemann could
say in his defence. He was content to declare that Helphand had
undertaken the mission at the request of the Bolsheviks.
In the meanwhile, immediately after the incident of the exchange of telegrams, the German Government made arrangements
to keep a close watch on Helphand's activities. The day after his
conversation with Radek, the Deputy General Staff in Berlin
ordered the Abwehrstellethe army intelligenceand the Telegraph Supervisory Office to observe every step Helphand took,
and to register every telegram he dispatched: the order was
suspended only on 23 May 1918.11 The German Government was
now clearly determined to prevent Helphand from pursuing an
independent policy.
For his own part, Helphand had received a clear hint that the
German Government was intending to exploit the revolution in
Russia for its own ends. In a report of the Counsellor in the
Austro-Hungarian Legation to Stockholm, Prince Emil von
Frstenberg, Helphand's position was described with astonishing
clarity. He wrote to Czernin on 18 November that Helphand's
views would 'hardly fall into the same category as those of the
9
The State Secretary to Riezler, telegram No. 1562 of 18 November 1917, in Akten
der Gesandtschaft Stockholm., 72 a. Other diplomatic exchanges concerning this episode
can be found in the same file.
10
Verhandlungen des deutschen Reichstags, XIII, vol. 311, p. 3961.
11
The order of the General Staff can be found in WK 2 c.
242
Wilhelmstrasse. His tactics are based on entirely different premisses, and his aims are not entirely the same. Helphand is an old
Russian revolutionary, who has been working vigorously on the
preparations for the revolution in Russia during the past two
years, and who now wants to crown his endeavour by bringing
about, so to speak, a peace of brotherliness, under his own
own auspices. . . . Helphand is working, if I may say so, one
third for the Central Powers, one third for Social Democracy, and
one third for Russia, whose proletariat he wants to bind to himself
by offering favourable conditions. In these circumstances, it is
desirable to keep a sharp eye on his moves, and not let him get
above himself.'12
Helphand now had the diplomatic resources of the Central
Powers ranged against him. He could not expect the diplomats
to accept the socialists as partners in the peace negotiations with
the Bolsheviks. If the war was to be exploited in the interests of
socialism, then the socialist parties would have to be brought into
play as independent factors.
An international socialist meetinglike the conference which
had run into difficulties in Augustnow appeared to him a
suitable counterbalance to the policy of Berlin. The socialist
parties, Helphand thought, would come to an understanding
more easily than the diplomatic representatives. It was clear, in
Helphand's words, that 'if a congress of socialist parties of the
states concerned should meet at the same time as the official peace
conference, the work of this congress would exert a strong
influence on public opinion in favour of a democratic peace'.13
It was Thorvald Stauning, the leader of the Danish party,
whom Helphand regarded as the most suitable person to organize
the socialist peace conference. Helphand found it easy to get
Stauning's support for the idea, especially when he suggested that
the conference should take place in the Danish capital and not
in Stockholm.14 Helphand of course did not mention to Stauning
his secret hope that he himself would be able to exercise a
stronger influence on the work of the conference in Copenhagen,
12
13
14
Frstenberg to Czernin, 18 December 1917, HHuStA, PA. XXVI, 33.

Stauning to Helphand, 22 November 1917, Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
Dirty Hands
243
and that he could thus consolidate his position. As Stauning did

not want to suggest Copenhagen himself, Helphand exerted all
his powers of persuasion to win over Ebert and Scheidemann for
his choice of the meeting place. They met Helphand's request
half-way. They let Stauning know that 'both places [i.e. Copenhagen or Stockholm] were equally agreeable' to them.
Helphand's endeavours for socialist peace negotiations
seriously alarmed the Governments of the Central Powers. To
his utter dismay, Riezler found that Helphand's ideas were
supported by Vorovski, the only remaining Bolshevik representative in Stockholm. There was also a threat from another direction:
Matthias Erzberger had plans of his own in regard to Russia. As a
leading Reichstag deputy of the Centre Party, Erzberger was now
pursuing aims similar to those of Helphand. But Erzberger's idea
was that representatives of the Reichstag, rather than of the
socialist parties, should take part in the main peace negotiations.
Riezler did his best to discredit both Helphand and Erzberger
in the eyes of the Bolsheviks. He consulted Vorovski about the
progress of the negotiations almost daily: he told the Bolshevik
representative, again and again, that only direct talks with the
German Government were in the Soviet's own interest. With
Khlmann's approval, he even let the Bolshevik Government
know that, immediately after the conclusion of peace, Germany
would be prepared to grant it a substantial loan.15
Nevertheless, time was running out fast for Helphand. By the
beginning of December, he had not made much progress in
improving his position in regard to the Foreign Ministry. His plan
for a socialist conference was now widely known and discussed,
but that was all. The German Government was doing much
better: within a few days, official armistice negotiations were
about to start at Brest-Litovsk, the fortress town on the PolishRussian frontier, and the seat of the German Eastern Command.
Faced with this situation, Helphand decided on a desperate
step. He made an attempt to bring the leaders of the German party
together with the Bolsheviks, in order to prove to the Soviet
Government that the Germans were prepared to negotiate on a
socialist level. He tried to get Ebert and Scheidemann to come to
15
Telegram No. 1571 of 22 November 1917, in Akten der Gesandtschaft Stockholm, 72 a.
244
Stockholm: in the end he succeeded in talking only Scheidemann

into making the trip. Again, the Foreign Ministry exerted powerful pressure on the socialist leader: Rantzau had talked to him
persuasively in Copenhagen, and when Scheidemann arrived at
Helphand's Stockholm flat on 11 December, Kurt Riezler was
already waiting for him there. The diplomats were successful.
Scheidemann was so lacking in political resolution that he completely abandoned the idea of a socialist peace conference.
When Scheidemann at last met Vorovski and Helphand, the
German socialist leader behaved as a well-briefed emissary of the
Wilhelmstrasse. To Vorovski's objection against Brest-Litovsk
as the location of the forthcoming official negotiations, Scheidemann replied that it did not matter where, but how, the negotiations would be conducted. He also told Vorovski the news he had
received from Riezlerthat, if the Bolsheviks were represented
by Lenin or Trotsky, Khlmann himself was prepared to come
to Brest-Litovsk. As far as the question of the socialist peace
conference was concerned, nothing could move Scheidemann to
take up a decisive position. He listened to the arguments Helphand presented at the three-hour conference without comment,
without giving any indication as to how far the German party
identified itself with Helphand's views. Only towards the end of
the conversation, when Helphand assured Vorovski that no
revolution would occur in Germany at least until the end of the
war, did Scheidemann express his agreement.
Scheidemann's visit to Stockholm meant a political fiasco for
Helphand. As the German Legation reported, with much satisfaction, to Berlin, the socialist leader had 'done nothing for the
socialist conference, in spite of Parvus'.16 To make the situation
still worse for Helphand, the Stockholm newspaper Socialdemocrat published an article on the same day, 15 December,
which was highly critical of the Bolshevik 'secret diplomacy' conducted by Helphand and Vorovski. The article revealed that
Scheidemann was in Stockholm on a secret visit, and it expressed
the suspicion that the Bolsheviks had begun to negotiate with the
German majority socialists. The German Legation thought the
article, from the point of view of official policy, very useful. It
16
Telegram No. 2037 of 15 December 1917, in WK 2 geh.
Dirty Hands
245
would make private relations between Helphand and Vorovski

more difficult, and it would put the Bolsheviks off the idea of a
socialist conference.
Helphand could do no more than remain in touch with
Vorovski. He thought he held the one last trump card. If Radek
came back with a positive reply from Lenin, the idea of a socialist
conference might still be salvaged. This was the reason why
Helphand stayed on in Stockholm: he was waiting for Radek to
return, and to bring back clear instructions for the Bolshevik
external bureau. In addition, Lenin's decision about Helphand's
return to Russia was still pending. The Foreign Ministry continued to regard Helphand's activities as extremely dangerous.
There still existed the possibility that, through his relations with
the Bolshevik Mission, Helphand might have an adverse effect on
the official negotiations, which were about to begin at BrestLitovsk. The Ministry employed a transparent ruse when it asked
Helphand to come to Berlin immediately, for important business
negotiations.
Helphand treated the request in a dilatory manner, finally
producing an equally silly excuse, that he was unable to get a
booking for the train journey. Even the diplomats knew that he
would not leave Stockholm before Radek's return: they were
ignorant, however, of the personal side of the story. Above all,
Helphand wanted to know whether Lenin would allow him to
come back to Russia.
It was, of course, an unusual request for Helphand to have
made. Nevertheless, Karl Radekthe only first-hand witness of
these events in December 1917, to which Helphand himself never
made a single referencewas wrong when he maintained, after
Helphand's death in 1924, that his late friend had decided to turn
over a new leaf, to set out on the straight and narrow path of
personal and political reform. Radek committed a gross act
of sentimentality in the columns of Pravda when he maintained
that, after the November revolution in Russia, Helphand wanted
to pull himself out of the 'morass' of his past, and to begin a new
life in the services of the Russian revolution.
Helphand was too calculating and intelligent for that. He
would hesitate to betray himself by a single dramatic gesture, to
M.R.-R
246
dismiss his whole past as a dismal catalogue of errors. He was too

sceptical to entertain the illusion that, through nave and uncritical co-operation in the construction of the Soviet State, he
could begin a new life as a paragon of socialist honour. Nor was
Helphand likely to have been moved by a desire to return to the
country of his birth.
Helphand's thoughts were moving on different lines. He had,
after all, made a considerable contribution to the victory of the
Bolsheviks: was it unreasonable to expect that they would now
acknowledge him as an ally? And even without public acknowledgement, could the Bolsheviks not continue to make use of his
advice and financial skills? There also may have existed political
considerations in Helphand's mind. He had long distrusted
Lenin's autocratic tendencies in matters of party organization,
and he may well have believed that he could influence developments in Russia in the direction of a workers' democracy. It is,
however, clear that Helphand's request to return to Russia was,
above all, a bold political move designed to maintain his independence of action, and a defensive device against the outflanking manoeuvres of the diplomats.
Then at last, on 17 December, Radek returned to Stockholm.
According to Radek's recollections, Lenin's reply was not only
disappointing for Helphand: it was offensive. Radek told Helphand that the Bolshevik leader could not allow him to return to
Russia, and that, in the words of Lenin, 'the cause of the revolution should not be touched by dirty hands'. Helphand's last hope
for support disappeared: his political plans collapsed. He now
had time to reflect on the self-righteous tone of Lenin's reply.
Helphand knew that there was a strong 'pro-German' group in
the Bolshevik party, which consisted of his friends: Radek,
Frstenberg, and Rakovsky were the most prominent in the
faction. What he did not knowand this would have softened
the blow of Lenin's decisionwas that, since August, a forceful
campaign against Frstenberg had been going on inside the
central committee. In August and September 1917, while Lenin
was still in hiding in Finland, the 'controversial affairs' of
Frstenberg and Kozlovsky, that is, their connexions with
Helphand, were discussed no less than eight times at the sessions
Dirty Hands
247
of the committee.17 Early in December, while Radek was waiting

for Lenin's decision, the controversy about Frstenberg flared up
once more on the Bolshevik central committee. Again, Lenin was
unable to attend the meeting, which decided to rescind Frstenberg's nomination as the Soviet diplomatic representative to
Scandinavia. On 12 December, Lenin wrote a letter of protest to
the central committee, in which it was made plain that some of the
party leaders regarded the shady relations between Frstenberg
and Helphand as a sufficient reason for not entrusting Lenin's
and Helphand's mutual friend with the mission to Scandinavia.
In his letter to the central committee, Lenin endeavoured to
present the co-operation between Frstenberg and Helphand as
having been of a purely business, unpolitical nature, and to
dismiss all the accusations as the 'chatter of irresponsible gossips'.
Lenin wrote: 'What evidence does one have against Hanecki?
Hanecki earned his bread and butter as an employee of a firm
in which Parvus had shares. That is how Hanecki told me the
story. . . . Are there not others among us who have worked for
Russian, English or other capitalist trading companies? The
whole business is nothing more than "fear" of chatter by irresponsible gossips. . . . Such an attitude towards an absent
comrade who has worked for the party for over ten years is the
peak of unfairness.'18
Lenin was unable to change the decision of the central committee, and alternative employment had to be found for Kuba
Frstenberg. (He was rewarded for political services rendered,
by becoming the head of the Soviet State Bank.) Nevertheless,
the affair sufficed to show Lenin the risks connected with Helphand's return to Russia. Lenin liked neither Helphand nor his
politics enough to tax the patience of his central committee
further: it was not difficult for Lenin to jettison Helphand, as
well as his political plans.
Lenin's refusal must have deeply affected Helphand. He knew
better than to expect gratitude, but he could not help feeling
especially embittered by the behaviour of his friends among the
17
Protokoly tsentralnovo komiteta RSDRP (b), Avgust 1917Fevral 1918, Moscow, 1958,
p. 250.
18
Lcninskii Sbornik, XXXVI, Moscow, 1959, pp. 18-19.
248
Bolsheviks. All of them appeared to him to have sacrificed their

friendship for the sake of their political careers. Helphand came
to despise Radek most of all: from now on he was to refer to
him, only when he had to, as the 'political harlequin'.
Without the support of the Bolsheviks, without a socialist
conference, Helphand was forced to capitulate to the Foreign
Ministry. The German diplomats were still in business, and he
could try to influence them by giving them advice: but he had
no fulcrum for the leverage he had wished to operate independently.
On Christmas Eve 1917, Helphand let the Stockholm Legation
know that he was now ready to comply with the Foreign Ministry's
earlier request, and come to Berlin. The diplomats bore him no
grudge. In a letter to Bergen, Kurt Riezler announced Helphand's
impending arrival in Berlin.
At this moment, when his interests and ours are running parallel again,
he is once more very important, and I would strongly recommend you
to ask him, in confidence and quite intimately, for his advice in Berlin. . . . He really is a very considerable man and he has excellent
ideas. It may well be that we shall soon feel that it would be an advantage to base our position in Russia on wider circles than those around
Lenin, and in that event he will be essential to us.
He must not be allowed to suspect that we simply wanted to get him
away from here.
I have nothing against his return, especially if things go well at Brest.
However, I think that we could now use him better somewhere else,
as Stockholm will soon cease to be of any importance as regards Russia
because of the poor communications with Petrogradthat is, if nothing
goes wrong at Brest. Let us hope that all goes well.19
On the surface, Helphand's toughness was indeed amazing. He

returned to his old haunts as if nothing had ever happened. Only
in the following months did his actions betray some of the scars,
some of the deep sense of personal loss, that had been inflicted on
him in the days in the middle of December 1917. On 28 December
he was back at the Foreign Ministry; two days later he called on
his old friend, Brockdorff-Rantzau, in Copenhagen.
19
Dirty Hands
249
He told Rantzau of his low estimate of the stability of the

Soviet regime, of his belief that conditions in Russia would return
to normal only a few years after the conclusion of peace. He
thought of Bolshevism as an anomalous period of transition, which
would give way to a more democratic form of government. On the
question of war aims, the personal affront recently administered by Lenin brought Helphand nearer the position of the
Foreign Ministry: he now regarded annexation plans with great
sympathy.
In this respect, the conversation between the two men followed a widely meandering course. Helphand was desperately
trying to re-establish his position with the diplomats and he did
his best to please them. Although he thought that the GermanRussian negotiations had opened, on 22 December, in a promising
way, he agreed with Rantzau that if the Bolsheviks behaved
badly at Brest-Litovsk military pressure would have to be employed against them. He thought that Russia could easily be
finished off by half a million troops, that she could be partitioned
and her power completely destroyed. But what if Germany
achieved a military break-through in the West? In such a case,
Helphand told Brockdorff-Rantzau, there could be no more talk
of a negotiated peace with Russia. If Russia were eliminated and
France defeated, then Germany could, in Helphand's words,
'establish a gigantic army . . . which would dominate the whole
of Europe'.20 There could then be no limit to Germany's territorial
claims.
In the following months, Helphand developed his vision of
Germany's military and political hegemony in Europe still
further. His position corresponded exactly to that of Adolf Hitler
in 1941, after the National Socialist assault on the Soviet Union.
Germany's hegemony appeared preferable to a Continental
balance shared in by Russia. On 30 December 1917, however,
when Helphand talked to Rantzau, he may have realized that he
had allowed himself to go too far. He again warned Rantzau of the
danger of Russia's desire for revenge, and then he steered the
conversation to a different problem. He said that independent
20
'Geheime Aufzeichnung', 30 December 1917, in Nachlass Brockdorjf-Rantzau,

H232334-H232345.
250
states such as Finland, Poland, and the Ukraine, would always

gravitate to Russia, and that they would offer only a limited
protection for Germany. As he had done before, he again stressed
economic considerations; that it was more important for Germany to secure her share in Russia's industrial development than
to annex a few provinces.
Helphand's description of the relations between Germany and
Russia was pure music to the ears of the German diplomats. They
put no obstacles in his way when he decided, early in January,
to return to Stockholm.
He had convinced himself of Lenin's hostility, and he had
made his peace with the diplomats: Helphand was now ready to
take up the Bolshevik leader's challenge. He had never thought
very highly of the intellectual qualities of his Bolshevik friends,
and he fondly regarded himself as one of their leading mentors.
In the few weeks of its existence, the new Government in Petrograd had made so many mistakes that, in Helphand's opinion,
they could be fatal to its standing at home and abroad.
On 20 December the central committee had ordered the establishment of a political police force, the Cheka; on 26 December
the Soviet Government appropriated two million roubles for the
support of revolution in western Europe; on the following day,
banking in Russia became a state monopoly. Helphand was convinced that these measures would find no support among the
majority of the Russians, and he came to regard it as his duty to
attack the Bolsheviks for these mistakes, and to encourage the
socialist opposition groups.
He planned a press campaign inside and outside Russia, which
was to effect the isolation of the Bolshevik party from the majority
of the nation; he intended to convince the local organizations and
the middle ranks of the party hierarchy that the Bolsheviks were
leading Russia into dangerous waters. He wanted to make use of
the mood of opposition which existed in Russia at the time: he
intended to mobilize and encourage the enemies of the Bolsheviks,
and thus put their government under severe pressure.
After his return to Stockholm at the beginning of January 1918,
Helphand lost no time in launching his anti-Bolshevik campaign.
He had already founded, at the beginning of December, a
Dirty Hands
251
Russian news-sheet called Izvne'From Outside'. He could now

use it for this campaign; it was being delivered to Russia in
several thousands of copies, and distributed free of charge. As
Helphand told Prince Frstenberg of the Austrian Legation,
on 28 January, he wanted 'through this publication . . . to
exercise influence on the soldiers' and workers' councils in the
cities and in the provinces, . . . to teach them their lessons,
and to rub the government's nose in all the serious mistakes
which it had committed in the last weeks, against its own best
interests'.21
In Izvne, Helphand ran through the lessons which his former,
unfortunately rather thick-skulled pupils had forgotten. Russia
was not yet ripe for socialism which, in any case, was not to be
achieved by 'official decrees', but by a 'social process'. Nationalization of banking made sense only in the countries which had
reached a high degree of industrial development. Indeed, the
whole social programme of the Bolsheviks revealed their 'terrible,
boundless ignorance and lack of perception'. He was highly
critical of the Bolshevik advance towards dictatorship: this was
undemocratic, and Russia was not yet ready for the dictatorship
of the proletariat.
At long last, Helphand was now standing on the same side of
the barricade as his former friend, Rosa Luxemburg. They were
united in their condemnation of Lenin's party, and they furiously
disputed its claim to be a revolutionary elite, which could deputize
for the working class in revolutionary matters. A minority could
not terrorize the majority of the nation indefinitely, Helphand
pointed out; '. . . it will not be possible for a workers' government to survive for ever with the aid of machine guns. . . .'22
Helphand described what the Bolsheviks had so far done in
Russia as 'an insult to the splendid history of European revolutions' ; the Soviets reminded him more of a 'Jewish cabal than of
a modern democracy'. The Bolsheviks maintained themselves in
power only by the force of arms: in the Red Army, they had
created hirelings for their own protection, 'like the multimillionaires of America'.
21
22
Frstenberg to Czernin, 28 January 1918, HHuStA, P.A.Kreig 3, 836.

252
Helphand's criticism of the Bolsheviks became still sharper

soon after the conclusion, on 3 March, of the negotiations at
Brest-Litovsk. It was only in private conversations with the
German and Austrian diplomats that Helphand distributed the
blame for the treaty between the two contracting parties. By her
desire for annexations, Helphand feared that Germany had deprived herself of the chance of running an economic monopoly in
the East. The 'blemishes'Helphand was stating his case cautiously
of the treaty dictated by the German Government, would
have disastrous effects on future relations between the two states.23
In public, however, he put the whole blame for the treaty
squarely on the Bolsheviks. By their renunciation of the socialist
conference, they had made it possible for the German Imperialists
to turn the screw. Helphand believed that a compromise had been
possible in regard to the original German demands which, he
thought, were quite realistic. But the 'revolutionism' of the Bolsheviks committed them to a policy of 'all or nothing'. They had
discredited the German Social Democrats and strengthened the
German military party in its conviction that a negotiated peace
with Russia was not possible. The 'huckster' Trotsky, and the
'windbag' Radek, bore the main responsibility, according to
Helphand, for the 'revolutionary chauvinism' which led to the
peace of Brest-Litovsk.24
There were certain tragic undertones in Helphand's position
after the Brest-Litovsk treaty. The ideas he regarded as his own
had turned against him. His former friend Trotsky had used the
theoretical foundations of Helphand's conception of a workers'
democracy in support of his own view that Russia could venture
the step into socialism at a time when the workers constituted a
minority of the population. The German Government, on the
other hand, had converted Helphand's idea of a separate peace
with the Bolsheviks into a dictated peace which required military
force to ensure its fulfilment. Both sides had used Helphand, and
then suddenly dropped him. He had helped to clear the way for
momentous historical developments, without having enough
influence to control their direction.
23 Frstenberg to Czernin, 23 April 1918, HHuStA, P.A. XXVI, 33.
24
Dirty Hands
253
He might have consoled himself with the thought that both

the Imperial Government in Germany and the Bolshevik regime
would shortly collapse. A revolution in Germany might sweep the
present system away; as for Russia, Helphand regarded the overthrow of the Bolshevik Government as being, to a high degree,
his own personal mission.
Again, Helphand needed a front organization, but this time for
operations against the Bolsheviks: it should be able to work
inside Russia, without giving the appearance of a political opposition centre. Helphand was inventive and skilled at producing
such organizations: a few days after Radek had returned from
Petrograd with Lenin's message, Helphand had a blue-print
ready. To Brockdorff-Rantzau he outlined a plan to create a
'large-scale press organization', which would disseminate and
collect news in Russia. The diplomats were quite impressed, and
soon after Helphand arrived in Stockholm, early in January 1918,
he was certain of official financial support for his plans.25
Helphand very likely regarded the distribution network of his
Izvne news-sheet as the nucleus of the future press organization;
although he did not inform the diplomats of its anti-Bolshevik
purpose, they would have raised no objections. Since the opening
of the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, the German Government
had been greatly concerned with the effects of Bolshevik propaganda at home: there was nothing objectionable in repaying the
Bolsheviks in their own coin.
Despite the undesirable revolutionary agitation generated by
the Soviets, the peace of Brest-Litovsk brought ample rewards for
Berlin. At long last Germany's rulers could breathe more freely:
they had achieved the aim they had been pursuing since November 1914. The war was reduced to a one-front engagement: as a
result, a powerful German offensive was launched, on 10 March,
on the western front. The relief engendered a mood of high
optimism in Berlin: it survived surprisingly long, until midsummer 1918. In these circumstances, and under heavy pressure
from the great industrialists, the German Government endeavoured to 'keep Russia under control', and to penetrate the
country economically. This policy was summed up by State
25
Bergen to Lucius, telegram No. 27 of 2 January 1918, in WK 2 gen.
254
Secretary Hintzehe succeeded Khlmann in Julyin the

following manner: 'What do we want in the East? The military
paralysis of Russia. The Bolsheviks are taking care of this better
than any other Russian party, without our contributing a single
man or a single penny. We cannot demand that they or other
Russians should love us for the fact that we are squeezing their
country like an orange. . . . That is exactly what we are doing:
we are not co-operating with the Bolsheviks, we are exploiting
them. That is what politics is about.'26
Helphand sensed this policy when it was in the making, and,
with his intuitive understanding of the shifting goals of German
diplomacy, he managed to ride its wave. There was real virtuosity
in his skill in harnessing the desires of the Reich Government to
his own political and commercial schemes.
Towards the end of May, Helphand came to regard his
Russian propaganda operations as inadequate: early in the following month he submitted a detailed memorandum to the Foreign
Ministry, which elaborated on the expansion of the enterprise. He
was thinking in terms of a vast publicity empire which would 'far
exceed the achievements of Lord Northcliffe'. He assured the
diplomats that 'if we employ the necessary tact and sufficient
means . . . we should be able to bring the whole of the Russian
press under our control'.27 Helphand envisaged the foundation of
some 200 new dailies all over Russia, which would be kept
supplied with news by an agency covering China, Japan, Afghanistan, and Persia. Each of these newspapers would be technically
independent, but 'the connexion would be established by the
concentration of shares in a holding company in Berlin, of which
the public should know nothing. The centre would issue instructions through its agents. . . . All this would be made possible
by a capital of 200 million marks.'
Helphand then proposed that his already established publishing house in Berlin should produce a million almanacksthe
annual publication, designed to entertain and edify, which was
popular especially among the literate peasantry in Russiato be
26
27
F. Fischer, Griffnach der Weltmachty pp. 764-5.

Memorandum by Helphand on 'Das Verhltnis Deutschlands zu Russland', undated, in Deutschland Nr. 31 geh.
Dirty Hands
255
charged to the German Government at four marks a copy. Their

sale would have two advantages for Germany: first, it offered the
possibility of 'creating a permanent organization extending
throughout Russia. Branch offices would be set up in the various
capitals and provincial towns, and they would employ personnel
who could later take over the newspapers. . . . Altogether, the
branches would have 1,000 permanent employees, and together
with agents and salesmen, the operation would require about
10,000 men.' And secondly, Germany could use the almanacks
for political as well as economic advertisements. 'We shall say
what should be said about England. Briefly, we shall exploit our
propaganda opportunities to the full.'
On 17 June, the Foreign Ministry received a notification that a
'further 40 million marks' had been made available, and Helphand
received the commission to begin at once with the production of
the almanacks. The fact that the Foreign Ministry was taken in by
Helphand's fantastic project is explicable by the mood, so fittingly
described by State Secretary Hintze, that prevailed in Berlin at
the time: it reflects on the diplomats rather than on the author of
the plan. It came to a grotesque end. The production of the
almanack was completed only after Germany's defeat, at the end
of the year. In order to save the invested capital, the almanacks
some 600,000 copies were readyhad to be somehow got to
Russia and sold there. By special permission from his old comrades, Ebert and Scheidemannthe President and the Prime
Minister respectively in the new Governmentmilitary transport
carrying the almanacks, set out for Russia. It did not get beyond
the Soviet frontier. In Berlin, revelations in the opposition newspapers built up the affair into a dangerous political scandal, in
which Ebert and Scheidemann were accused of favouritism, and
Helphand of bribery and corruption.28
But to return to the early summer of 1918. Helphand himself
was clearly affected by the same mood of hysterical optimism as
prevailed in the Berlin Government circles. He also had his own
vendetta against the Bolsheviks to carry on: the vast newspaper
enterprise was intended to fulfil the same political function as the
more modest news-sheet, Izvne. The scale of the new enterprise
28
M. Harden, Die Zukunft, 6 December 1919.
256
was conceived in the dimensions in which Helphand had become

accustomed to think during these years; it was no less characteristic of his thinking that political and business interests were
interwoven in the enterprise. He did not see why his feud with
the Bolsheviks should affect his business interests adversely:
there was perhaps a profit to be made out of the situation. It was
therefore not surprising that Helphand was available in Berlin
when economic negotiations were opened, at the end of June,
between the German Government and the new Bolshevik mission.
As a businessman, Helphand was not unreasonable. The price
for his help in getting 100,000 tons of coal from Germany to
Russia was a mere 5 per cent of the total sum.29
Despite the continued 'surfeit of mammon', Helphand now
appeared to be losing his touch. Often afflicted by rheumatism
and past his fiftieth year, he was ageing fast. In his newspaper
project, fantasy merged with reality: he was finding it more and
more difficult to tell business and politics apart. Nor did he
perceive that the growing criticism of his person and of his activities during the war had isolated him from the German Social
Democrat party. There had been the publicity connected with
the financing of the Bolshevik party in the summer of 1917.
Then there appeared the highly critical series of articles in the
Danish daily Kbenhaven, which ran from 24 November until
5 January 1918: different versions of it later appeared in many
European newspapers, including Le Temps, Matin, Gazette de
Lausanne, and the Daily Mail. It firmly established the image of
Helphand as a crook and a war profiteer.
He defended himself as best he could. His apologia pro vita sua,
issued by his own publishing house in Berlin in the spring of
1918, carried, despite its impassioned tone, little conviction.30 The
accounts of his Danish coal business, of his war transactions, and
of his relations with the Bolsheviks, were such a hopeless mixture
of truths, half-truths, and deliberate omissions, that the pamphlet
only fed the various rumours already in circulation. Its tone of
moral indignation fell flat:
The slanderers have been given a hearing, they have been believed and
29
G. A. Solomon, Sredi krasnykh vozhdei, Paris, 1930, vol. 1, p. 100.

Parvus,Im Kampf um die Wahrheit.
30
Dirty Hands
257
encouraged, they have even been helped to achieve a certain renown.

And yet I have been taking part in public life for more than thirty
years, my writing stretches back more than a quarter of a century. One
would suppose that I had earned the right to be judged according to
my views, without the imputation of low motives. My life is punctuated
by my writings as by mile-stones; from year to year, one can establish
what formed the centre of my thinking, what filled my life at the time.
. . . And when I look down at the puny creatures crawling far below
and trying to throw dirt at me, I feel that between me and this people
there lies the whole history of civilization. . . . I am going on my way
to new, to old tasks.31
'The new, the old tasks' had now contracted for Helphand to
one thing onlyGermany's military victory. After all his other
plans foundered, Helphand felt that the fate of Germany would
be his own fate. 'The victory of Germany and her allies', he
wrote, 'can no longer be delayed.'32 The material resources of the
Ukraine, of Rumania and Bulgaria, appeared to him sufficient to
hold off the Entente Allies for an unlimited length of time. He was
convinced that Germany would be able to dictate the peace in the
West as she had done in the East: he dreamt of a united Europe
under the military and political leadership of Berlin.
He gravely overestimated the strength and endurance of the
Reich. He did so largely because his personal experience was
confined to Continental Europe and to Russia: he had left the
Continent only once in his life, to attend the congress of the
Second International in London in 1896. Despite his theoretical
studies of the world market and other global phenomena, his
picture of the world centred on Europe, and in it America was a
name without any economic or strategic significance. Like so
many other European politicians, he was not perspicacious
enough to include her in his calculations of the development of
the war. The year 1918 extended his imaginative powers to their
limits; events were moving too fast for him.
Not until September 1918 did Helphand recognize that the
war was lost. The collapse of his world was hard enough for him to
take, but it had a certain sobering effect. He had been intoxicated
31
Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, pp. 45-47.
32
ibid., p. 60.
258
by the prospect of Germany's victory for too long: in the cold

light of morning, he made a quick return to reality. Now that
the military decision had been made, every additional day of the
war seemed to him a senseless increase in human sacrifice. Perseverance, Helphand was convinced, would only worsen the
coming chaos, and would facilitate the same development in
Germany as that experienced by Russia during the period of the
Bolsheviks' ascent to power.
He at once decided to switch over his own organs of publicity
to the policy of peace. When he failed to wean Ernst Heilmann,
the editor of his Internationale Korrespondenz, away from the
policy of blind perseverance, he simply killed the whole newspaper. He offered to pay Heilmann 20,000 marks for breach of his
editorial contract: it was worth this much to him to bring the war
to an end, at least in his own newspapers.33
Although he was uncertain as to what forms the new, post-war
order would take, he clearly foresaw the dangers of the near
future. Before Germany's final collapse in October 1918, Helphand warned the readers of Die Glocke of the perils of a 'democracy of defeat'. Using the new Government of Prince Max von
Baden to illustrate his point, he showed how the rulers of the
Reich had decided to give way to democracy only in order to
improve their political position. They were doing no more than
offering democracy in Germany as a concession to the Entente
Powers for a negotiated peace. Helphand appealed to the German
socialists to assist democracy in making a break-through out of
conviction, and not as the present Government was doing, out of
dubious political considerations.34
Helphand's reference to a democracy of defeat contained an
implied hint at the birth of a revolution from the military breakdown. This would not be his kind of a revolution. He had not
wanted it, and he had done everything to prevent it. He had never
tired of arguing, with his Bolshevik comrades in Stockholm, that
a revolution in Germany could not be expected for the time being,
and not even immediately after the end of the war. When defeat
and revolution came in November 1918, Helphand was unable to
33
34
Heilmann in Das Freie Wort, 10 April 1931.

Parvus, 'Notizen zur Kanzlerkrise', Die Glocke, 1918, p. 904.
Dirty Hands
259
summon enough energy to take an interest in the new course of

events. He simply stood aside, isolated and passive.
Instead of staying in Berlin to put his services at the disposal
of the Social Democrat party, Helphand was to be found in the
Munich Chancellery talking to Dandl, the Bavarian Prime Minister, about measures to be taken for the prevention of civil war. He
recommended immediate elections to a national assembly. The
nation must be given a chance, Helphand argued, to express its
opinion through elections and to send new men to parliament.
He must have known that he could not be among these new
men. He had brought upon himself, during the war, too much
public disapproval. Despite his political commitment, he had
made a fortune out of the war, and it was assumed that he would
use the military breakdown in a similar manner. It would have
been out of character had he done anything else. He at once
began buying up war surplus material: he exported military
vehicles to Denmark where the factory Aurora, owned by the
metal workers' union, provided them with new bodies, and distributed them on the Scandinavian market. According to Helphand's own account, the business proved 'not unprofitable'.
The outbreak of the revolution in Berlin on 9 November,
marked the end of a period of Helphand's life. By his collaboration with the Foreign Ministry, Helphand had become, consciously or not, a part of the order which now collapsed. While
the future of the new state was being decided, Helphand travelled
to Switzerland, into voluntary exile.
He had come to Germany from Switzerland in 1891 as a
militant and radical socialist. After twenty-seven years he made
the return trip, resigned and disenchanted, but rich enough to
enjoy what Switzerland had to offer.
12
Schwanenwerder
On 20 November 1918, after a long journey through
defeated, post-war Germany and Austria, Helphand arrived in
Zrich. He had seen, from the window of his first-class compartment, a fair sample of the grim realities of life in the defeated
countries; war invalids, railway stations crowded with ragged
troops returning home and civilians with no homes to return to.
Helphand wanted no reminders of poverty and privation. At this
point, he wanted what Switzerland had to offersecurity and
material abundance.
Helphand thought of his journey to Switzerland as a one-way
trip. He intended to settle at a place where he would be undisturbed, where he could live out his old age. The village Wdenswil
on the Lake of Zrich offered the ideal retreat, and it was here
that Helphand bought his house. It was on a small, expensive
estate; the chauffeur and the chambermaids, the cook and the
two Swiss farmers soon moved in to look after their master and his
property.
The arrival of the 'well-known comrade Parvus' caused a
local sensation. But the excitement soon died down, and Helphand and his establishment became an accepted, though notable,
landmark on the lake. His wealth impressed the cautious and
realistic local farmers and shopkeepers: a man as wealthy as
Helphand could hardly be a cheap adventurer. Had they known
the true size of Helphand's fortune, they would have been still
more impressed. In the years 1919 and 1920, his capital deposited in Switzerland amounted to 2,222,000 francs, producing
a yearly income of 123,000 francs. It was only a fragment of his
wealth, which was invested in almost all European countries,
from Sweden to Turkey.
But Helphand was not left undisturbed for long. The circum-
Schwanenwerder
261
stances and the timing of his arrival in Switzerland were all

wrong; he had been too much of a controversial figure to be
allowed a quiet exit from the political stage. As early as the end
of November, the first press reports appeared about his participation in the Swiss general strike, and then about the Bolshevik
agitation he had conducted, at the request of Chicherin, the
Soviet Foreign Minister, during the international socialist conference in Berne at the end of January.1 The suspicion that
Helphand was a Bolshevik agent was nourished by a profound
nervousness in Switzerland about the possibility of a Bolshevik
conspiracy against the state. In Helphand, the Swiss press believed they had discovered the arch-plotter of a fast-approaching
coup
d'tat.
Bickel, the Zrich public prosecutor, had started to collect
press-cuttings on the subject of Alexander Helphand in November ; his financial transactions were closely followed by the Swiss
authorities, who suspected that Helphand was engaged in distributing Bolshevik subsidies. By 30 January 1919 Bickel was
convinced that he had an open-and-shut case against the alleged
Bolshevik agent, and he had Helphand arrested.2
In the course of his interrogation it became apparent that the
case against Helphand rested mainly on the evidence supplied by
a large collection of press-cuttings. Helphand had little difficulty
in exposing the central weakness of the case for the prosecution,
and, to make quite sure of his safety, he appealed to his old friend,
Adolf Mller, now the new German Minister to Berne. On the
day after the arrest, Mller lodged a strong protest with the
Swiss Government: Dr. Helphand, the Minister pointed out, was
a member of the German socialist majority party, and a politician
who 'fought vigorously the Spartakists and especially the
Bolsheviks'.3
Helphand was released at once, even though on bail of 20,000
francs: it was paid back to him soon, and the Swiss authorities
politely informed him that no further action would be taken.
Although the press campaign showed no signs of abating, it did
1
2
3
Daily Telegraph, 26 January 1919.

'Meine Entfernung aus der Schweiz', Die Glocke, 1920, pp. 1484 et seq.
Telegram No. 223 of 31 January 1919, in Deutschland 141 Nr. 7 geh., 'Agenten*.
M.R.-S
262
not greatly disturb Helphand's peace of mind. As long as he was

allowed to enjoy his idyllic life at Wdenswil, he could endure the
journalists' shafts quite easily.
He was unable to desert politics for long. While his comrades
in Berlin were busy defending themselves and their Government
against assaults from the left by the Spartakists, Helphand wrote
his 'Letters to the German Workers'. They were considered,
didactic essays, written with insight, but without passion. He
showed how the institution of the Soviets was entirely out of
place in Germany, where there existed a parliamentary tradition;
he ran through the problems and tasks faced by the German
socialists at home and abroad. He again pointed at the threat
presented by Russia: he believed that the Bolsheviks would
transform the country into a military power which could be
confronted, on equal terms, by no other European state. He perceived that 'Czechoslovakia and Jugoslavia and Poland will all be
done away with, they all are creationsas soon as Russia develops
her military powerwhich will not survive one generation'.4
Nor was Helphand able to get away from his old political
friends. Philipp Scheidemann, the first Prime Minister of the
Weimar Republic, visited him at Wdenswil in the summer of
1919. Scheidemann had just resigned, after refusing to sign the
peace treaty: he was an embittered, depressed, sick man. He
personified the tragedy of the German revolution of November
1918. He had been attacked from the extreme right as a saboteur
of Germany's victory; he had been accused by the extreme left
as the murderer of the Spartakist leaders. Even his own party had
declared itself, at the crucial moment, for the acceptance of the
peace conditions, thus leaving him high and dry, in an untenable
position.
Scheidemann told his host of the insuperable political difficulties that lay in the path of the Weimar Republic. But in his
Wdenswil retreat, Helphand had been out of touch with the
developments in Germany; he ascribed his friend's pessimism to
overwork, and he provided him with every kind of luxury and
distraction. At the end of September, however, when he accompanied Schiedemann on the trip back to Berlin, he saw for himself
4
Der Arbeitersozialismus und die Weltrevolution, Berlin, 1919, IV, p. 12.
Schwanenwerder
263
that the situation was as bad as the socialist leader had depicted.
Neither the extremists nor the sentimentaliststhe nationalists, the communists, the monarchistshad become reconciled to
the Weimar Republic and the dominant position, in the Government, of the Social Democrats. Under assault from every side,
the socialists were concerned with the means of defence of the
Republic: could they trust the old officers' corps? It might be
highly skilled; it might even be useful in the struggle against
the Spartakists; but was it reliable from the point of view of the
Government? Many instances of disloyalty indicated that the
answer was a negative one. The controversy divided the socialist
leadership and occasioned a sharp clash between Ebert and
Scheidemann. Helphand was present at one of their conversations
on the subject, where Scheidemann took the line that the officers
could not be trusted with the defence of the state, nor with the
creation of the new army.
Helphand had never seen his friend so resolute as on the question of the officers' corps, and he gave Scheidemann all the
support he could. He published a large edition of Scheidemann's
speech, 'The Enemy is on the Right!', and he expressed his
agreement in Die Glocke. But Helphand knew that there was no
more for him to do in Berlin. He left it as unobtrusively as he had
arrived.
In Switzerland, the affairs of Helphand were still providing the
journalists with scandalous copy. At the end of November, their
campaign received fresh impetus from Germany. Maximilian
Harden, the well-established retailer of political gossip, had
become interested in Georg Sklarz, Helphand's Copenhagen
business partner: one thing led to another, and Harden went on
to give the readers of Die Zukunft a detailed account of Helphand's Russian almanack venture. Then an unfortunate altercation between Helphand and his former friend, Karl Kautsky,
provided Harden with new ammunition.5
Kautsky attacked Helphand on personal grounds, using information which only a long and intimate friendship could have
5
Parvus, 'Der Fall Kaustky', Die Glocke, 1919, pp. 1213-20; Kautsky's reply was
published in Welt am Montag, on 22 December 1919; Harden's article appeared in Die
Zukunft, January 1920.
264
given him. Helphand's reply was less than convincing: he put too
much of himself into the defence. He showed his hatred of the
German philistines, and of the qualities and institutions they held
in high regard. He dismissed the family as a 'robbers' nest', selfseeking and deceitful to the outside world; he expressed his
abhorrence of everything orderly and mediocre, as well as his
disregard for moral values. He wrote: 'Am I merely morally
degenerate, or without any morals whatsoever? I do not know,
such has been my life. Such I was and such I am, judge me as you
will, I know no other way.'6
In Helphand's defence, his most hidden thoughts lay revealed.
His German comrades reacted as if they had caught a glimpse of
the dark side of the moon. Konrad Haenisch alone resolutely
came to Helphand's defence. He wrote a warm and loving defence
of his friend in the Berlin Achtuhrabendblatt; without trying to
diminish Helphand's human weaknesses and faults, he expressed
his belief in his basic goodwill and honesty:
I believe that Parvus would be out of place as an honorary member of a
society of protestant maidens. His is an unusually strong nature, and
after all the decades of a poverty-stricken existence as a refugee, this
natural vigour is evident in every field, in the pleasures of the table as
much as those of love. . . . A church leader might perhaps disapprove
of certain details of Parvus's way of life. . . . As far as Parvus's
business transactions, the details of which I do not know, areconcerned,
please do not forget that Parvus is not a conforming German petit
bourgeois, and that, after his kind of development, he cannot become
one. He is a true son of Russia, of a European country ofalso spirituallyunlimited possibilities, and in his veins there doubtless flows a
remarkable mixture of Jewish, Russian, and Tartar blood. Such a man
has the right to be judged according to the laws of his own nature. One
should not hurriedly measure him by current standards, which, in
Germany, have become a part of our flesh and blood, or apply to him
our own attitudes, however much proved they may be.'7
Haenisch's plea for tolerance and understanding completely

failed to achieve its purpose. His high official positionHaenisch
6
Parvus, 'Philister
Quoted after the Preussische Zeitung, 5 December 1919.
ber mich', Die Glocke, 1919, p. 1339.
Schwanenwerder 265
was the Prussian Minister of Educationand his close personal

relationship with Helphand only provided the opposition press
with a new line of attack. Should a Prussian Minister have a
friend like that? Had not Scheidemann himself accepted Helphand's hospitality, proving his dependence on the man? Had not
the socialist Government made special arrangements for Helphand's Russian almanacks ?
The scandal fast developed into a crisis of confidence in the
Government. Maximilian Harden demanded the immediate
formation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry, which should
examine the misuse, by the ministers, of their official powers in
connexion with Helphand's business activities. Although Harden's suggestion did not materialize, the violent public debate
delivered valuable propaganda material into the hands of the
enemies of the Weimar Republic. The Nazis, in particular,
continued to make political capital out of it until January 1933.
According to their propaganda, Helphand was one of the leading
'November criminals': men responsible for a diversity of crimes
defeat in the war, foundation of the Republic, the humiliating
peace treaties, and much else besides. Alfred Rosenberg, the
leading Nazi ideologist, never tired of using Helphand as an
example of the detestable, corrupting influence of the Eastern
Jews on Germany's national life.
The storm in Berlin reached Switzerland, and it destroyed
Helphand's rural idyll on the Lake of Zrich. The first reports
about the alleged intimate relations between Helphand and the
Zrich Chief of Police appeared, accompanied by descriptions of
Helphand's 'harem' at Wdenswil. Details about constant supplies
of young ladies, and wild orgies at Helphand's house, were
punctuated by accusations of hugely successful political corruption, which had made Helphand into 'le roi de Zrich'.
The inevitable demand for Helphand's expulsion from Switzerland was raised. The Swiss Legation in Berlin received an order
to collect further evidence against Helphand; Adolf Mller, the
German Minister to Berne, found it increasingly difficult to
protect his friend against the Swiss authorities. Finally on 3
January, the highly respected Neue Zrcher Zeitung hinted at the
'unsavoury spectacle of the way Helphand conducted his private
266
life': at the end of the month, Helphand was officially informed

that his permission to reside in Switzerland could not be extended. He was asked to leave the country before 11 February
1920.
The Swiss journalists succeeded in hounding Helphand out of
the country. Although he may well have sought the consolations
of a life of pleasure to compensate him for the deep political
disappointments of the recent past, most of the political charges
against him were without foundation. The Swiss deportation
order was a bitter blow to Helphand. In his own newspaper, he
passionately disputed the decision of the Swiss Government.8 His
belief in the protective powers of wealth had received a blow; he
now spoke of his fortune with contempt. It followed him like a
curse, he wrote; he felt, he told a friend of his, like an 'inverted
Midas. The gold I touch turns into dung.'
Helphand, the ageing and tired Midas, returned to Berlin in
February 1920. He moved into a suite at the Hotel Kaiserhof: he
was not sure whether he wanted to stay in Berlin. He toyed with
the idea of settling down somewhere in South Germany, or in the
neighbourhood of Bodensee, but this was too much trouble. In
the end, he decided to set up house on the Schwanenwerder
estate, outside Berlin. It was on the Wannsee, the lake on the
River Havel; Helphand saw it as a poor substitute for Switzerland, Italy, and the sea.
Although he could live there without having to make yet
another involuntary move, it had been a hard decision for him to
make. Berlin was too evocative of his past, and Helphand had
never really liked the town. A personal letter to young Bruno
Schnlank, the son of Helphand's former employer, the editor of
the Leipziger Volkszeitung, revealed how desolate Helphand felt:
It has been a difficult decision for me, to come to Berlin. I have the feeling that, this time, I shall go under here. I hate these piles of masonry,
I cannot bear the oppressive atmosphere, and I cannot stand the
Berlinersthe city scepticism and cynicism, without the French esprit,
but with a coarse, upstart brashness. Talk is all that is left. And the
world is brimming over with hate.
8
'Meine Entfernung aus der Schweiz', Die Glocke, 1920, p. 1482.
Schwanenwerder 267
This is terrible. But how can one withdraw without abasing oneself?
To join the starving masses, put on sackcloth and ashes, playing poor
Job, all of one's own accord, merely in order to be like the others ? . . .
But the whole dunghill depresses me only because I fell out of touch
with current intellectual life. Am I unable to see it, or does it not
exist? . . . I need change and life, and all I see is decay, slime, dissolution. I hear only the sound of footsteps and the clamour of the market
place. . . . I long to get away from the cries of the hungry, I long for
them to stop, I cannot endure them any longer. But I would like to
drink deep again, I would like to return to the world where people
create and striveI do not want to have to listen any longer to shouts
of murder and lamentations. I want intellectual creativeness, the joy of
hope, the triumph of spiritual achievement, the joy of new discoveries
I would like to feel again the heartbeat of civilization.9
Berlin reminded Helphand of too many past disappointments.

As the winter of 1920 was drawing to its close, their memory set
off in him a deep personal crisis. When he was at last established
at his splendid residence at Schwanenwerder, he felt deceived:
this was not, after all, what he very much wanted. His dedicated
work for the Schsische Arbeiterzeitung, his passionate friendships
with Schnlank, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, were things of the
past. Most of his old friends were either dead, or manning the
other side of the barricades. There was nothing in his life that
could take their places.
The revolutions in Russia and in Germanyin one way or
another Helphand had predicted them and worked for them
had also run their course. In both countries the revolutions were
the outcome of national disaster, and their results now appeared
to Helphand drab and uninspiring. The stupidity of the bureaucrats had rubbed the bloom from the fruits of the revolution, the
political upheavals remained unaccompanied by a spiritual
renaissance.
When Helphand's thinking reached this point, it appeared that
there was still more hope for him. The younger generation of
socialists would have to find a new inspiration, they would have
9
Helphand to Bruno Schnlank, 25 April 1920. Quoted with the kind permission of
Herr Bruno Schnlank of Zrich.
268
to prevent the vulgar debasement of the revolutionary spirit. It

was precisely on this point that Helphand addressed his young
friend Schnlank in May:
No new ideas! That means: no life, no movement, no art, no science,
the sun is standing still, until the last satiated proletarian wife folds her
hands in her lap, and, yawning, declares that now all is well. . . .
Do you then not understand that this standstill of culture, until
socialism is realized, is basically the whole damned ignorance and
enmity to culture of an enslaved class, and that it is the outcome of the
Bolshevik pogromist policy?
This is precisely what has always set me against vulgar socialism,
and is still doing so nowadays: it is that I have always seen socialism and
the struggle for socialism as work and more work, the exertion of all the
powers of the collective, the most highly ideal striving, a spiritual
revolutionization of all human relations, the striving of new spiritual
forces!10
Helphand's fit of depression passed, and he was soon ready to

come to terms with the outside world. By the time he had written
to Schnlank, the house on the Wannsee was ready to receive its
first guests. It greatly differed from Wdenswil. Schwanenwerder
was not intended to be a quiet country retreat, a comfortable and
isolated fortress, which would invite the spinning of outrageous
rumours. On the Wannsee, Helphand kept open house on a
grand scale. There were liveried footmen and butlers in white
cotton gloves, who conformedas did their masterto a rather
elaborate etiquette. Lavish parties alternated with more intimate
evenings, and with discussions arranged for the benefit of the
younger socialist set. It was all very impressive and tame. The
formal receptions at Schwanenwerder were attended by socialist
ministers and State secretaries; by Scheidemann, who was now
under a lucrative contract to Helphand's publishing house, by
Haenisch, who remained a loyal friend, by Otto Wels, the
chairman of the socialist party, by Gradnauer, the Saxon Minister
to Berlin, by Ullrich Rauscher, the first press chief in the
Chancellery, who later became the Minister to Warsaw, and by
many other dignitaries of the Weimar Republic. Although Help10
Letter to Bruno Schnlank of 6 May 1920.
Schwanenwerder
269
hand knew that he could not aspire to high political office, he

remained, in this way, in close touch with the leadership of the
party as well as with the government of the Weimar Republic; his
advice was, when needed, still available.
In spite of the best food and drink Berlin could provide, there
often hung an air of unreality over these formal gatherings at
Schwanenwerder. For most of Helphand's friends, these were
unfamiliar surroundings. The menthose who had risen highest
above their original social starting-pointwere usually selfassured enough to take the splendour and formality in their stride.
It was their poor wives, according to a frequent visitor to Schwanenwerder, who suffered most. They had been unable to keep
up with their husbands' rapid rise to prominence, they were
intimidated, and they showed it.11
Fortunately for Helphand, formal receptions were not a daily
occurrence at Schwanenwerder. He was now giving much of his
attention to the younger generation of German socialists. He
expected a lot from them. He often invited them to informal
discussion evenings, and he was fond of lecturing to them on the
theory and practice of socialism. Arno Scholz, the present editor
of the largest Berlin daily, the Telegraph, and Bruno Schnlank,
were among the young socialists who attended Helphand's
gatherings. Scholz was introduced to socialist journalism by
Robert Breuer, then editor of Die Gloche; the young man also
acted, in the last years of Helphand's life, as his private secretary.
Bruno Schnlank had made a name for himself, during the war,
as a poet: he knew a side of Helphand's personality which
remained completely hidden from the jaundiced view of hostile
journalists. In one of his letters to Schnlank, Helphand wrote:
'I take it that your poetry has not yet earned you any palaces, and
I am therefore enclosing a cheque for 5,000 marks.'12
Apart from the prominent men and the young generation, there
were of course the various supplicants who came to Schwanenwerder : provincial journalists who asked for credits and grants
for their newspapers, or local socialist functionaries who wanted
to acquire printing-presses or buildings to house the secretariats
11
12
cf. M. J. Bonn, Wandering Scholar, London, 1949, p. 263.

Helphand to Schnlank, 19 March 1920.
270
of their organizations. They rarely left Helphand empty-handed.

In the spring of 1920, after he had overcome the depression
following his deportation from Switzerland, Helphand once
again returned to journalism. It had been the favourite occupation
of his youth, and he now gladly resumed his duties as the
publisher of Die Glocke. It was badly in need of attention. Over
the years, the periodical had become the domain of the socialist
intelligentsia: more often than was good for Die Cloche, opinionated university lecturers, inspectors of schools, and other
frustrated pedagogues were given an opportunity in its pages to
dispute their favourite themes, such as drunkenness, abortion, or
school reform. At the end of 1919, Konrad Haenisch resigned the
editorship of Die Glocke in order to devote himself to his official

duties as Minister of Education in Prussia; Max Beer, the former
London correspondent of Vorwrts, took over the editorship.
He made an effort to widen the circle of contributors: Die Glocke
now started printing occasional pieces by such well-known
socialists as Bernstein and Scheidemann, as well as by the younger
menErnst Niekisch, Erich Ollenhauer, Theodor Heuss, and
Ernst Reuter.
Helphand himself started to write regular articles for Die
Glocke, mainly on problems of financial policy and of reparations.
He appealed to reason and for sober, business-like thinking; he
demanded that international trade be freed from political restrictions. He believed that extortionate reparation payments were the
surest way to bankruptcy for all concerned: 'The point is not that
the heaviest possible load should be placed upon Germany, but
that France should be able to secure for herself the highest
participation in the development of Germany's industry.'13
Helphand was convinced that the problem of reparations
should be solved within the framework of European reconstruction; his optimism did not desert him even after the publication
of the London ultimatum on 5 June 1921, which demanded a
payment by Germany of an astronomic sum. Helphand clearly
perceived the dangers of a harsh treatment of the Weimar
Republic. Addressing France at the end of 1921, he wrote:
13
The most important of these articles were published in a book entitled Aufbau und
Wiedergutmachung, Berlin, 1921, p. 179.
Schwanenwerder
271
If you destroy Germany then you will make the German nation the
organizer of the next World War.
There exist two possibilities only: either the unification of western
Europe, or Russia's domination. The whole game with the buffer states
will end in their annexation by Russia, unless they are united with
central Europe in an economic community, which would provide a
counter-balance to Russia.
Either western Europe retains its industrial leadership, and for this
purpose it has to be politically cohesive, or it will become subordinate
economically, politically, and culturally to a great Russia, the frontiers
of which will extend from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. . . .
This would mean the fall of French as well as of German culture. In
such a case we should start to teach Russian to our children at school,
and introduce them to Russian history, so that they would not be helpless when they came under Russian rule.14
Helphand's conviction of the necessity of a close European

co-operation came to dominate his political activities. He had
been moving in this direction for some time. In the autumn of
1919, a select audience of diplomats and journalists had been
treated to an unusual spectacle at a dinner party at the Hotel
Kaiserhof, when Helphand lectured to them, in stiff but correct
French, on Russian politics.15 After his move to Schwanenwerder,
two well-known French professors, Hesnard and Haguenin, who
were then working in Berlin for the improvement of relations
between France and Germany, became regular visitors at the
house on the Wannsee.
Helphand's new conception needed a broad political basis: it
could not be carried out in the socialist context alone, which was
too specialized and parochial. Problems of European reconstruction and of the closer co-operation between western European
states required an international publicity organ. He set out to
explore the possibility of publishing a newspaper concerned
mainly with economics, which would be supported by the republican parties in Germany and which, apart from German, would
be printed in English, French, Italian, and Spanish.
The men to whom Helphand now turned, and who assisted
14
15
Parvus, Aufbauund Weidergutmachung, pp. 195-8.

Count Harry Kessler, Tagebuch, Frankfurt am Main, 1962, p. 203.
272
him in the early stages of the project, were the leading Berlin
liberals, who were well connected in political as well as in business circles. Ernst Jackh was one of them: he was a talented
writer and publicist who had acted, before the war, as an adviser
on the Far East to the Foreign Ministry, and who had since
undertaken numerous missions as a special emissary to the
European ruling houses. He was learned, sophisticated, and discreet: the foundation of the Berlin School of Politics belongs
among his many achievements. Helphand's plans, and especially
the suggestion that the newspaper should aim at the support of
the German republican parties, appealed to Jackh.
He declared himself ready to take part in preparing the
publication. On Jackh's advice, Helphand offered the editorship
of the newspaper to Moritz Bonn. Like Jackh, Bonn was a liberal
publicist and scholar; he had worked, shortly before the turn of
the century, at the London School of Economics: after assisting
Count Bernstorff at the German Embassy in Washington, he
acted as the economic adviser to Brockdorff-Rantzauthen
Foreign Ministerat the peace negotiations at Versailles.
When he first met Helphand, Bonn was deeply impressed. He
was reminded of characters in Balzac's novels: he at once recognized that there was a vital power in Helphand, an impressive
intelligence accompanied by keen practical sense. Bonn accepted
Helphand's offer, and the first number of Wiederaufbau'Reconstruction'appeared on 4 May 1922, in five European languages.
It was an impressive publication. The exertions of Jackh and
Bonn had not been in vain: after a few months of its existence,
Wiederaufbau counted among its authors some of the leading
German politicians and industrialists. Cunow, a director of the
Hamburg-Amerika shipping-line who later became the Reich
Chancellor, Carl Friedrich von Siemens, the young Theodor
Heuss, as well as the foremost German socialists, were among the
newspaper's contributors. Helphand himself wrote a lot for
Wiederaufbau, on similar subjects to those he dealt with in Die
Glocke and in an equally penetrating manner. The newspaper
commanded an impressive list of advertisers: the large Mercedes
and A E G firms, Banco di Roma, and many others, contributed
to the running costs of Helphand's publication.
Schwanenwerder
273
The editorial policy set the paper firmly on a western course,

on the path that led to Germany's understanding with the western
powers rather than with Russia, to Locarno rather than to
Rapallo. The treaty with Russia at Rapallo had been concluded
at Easter, shortly before the appearance of the first number of
Wiederaufbau: its editor regarded the treaty as a serious political
mistake, which would shatter the confidence of the western
powers in Germany. This policy, to which Helphand now gave
his full support, was again inspired by his considerations on the
future development of Russia: 'One has to bear in mind what
comes later: the great Russia.'16 The war had not, after all, done
away with the Russian colossus: the problem was still facing
Germany.
The Wiederaufbau project, like all Helphand's ventures, was
conceived on a grand scale. It was an unusual product of Weimar
journalism; although its conception, as a whole, may have been
over-ambitious, it left its mark on the political climate of the
period. By treating the reparations as a rational problem it paved
the way for the Locarno treaty, and it prepared the Germans for
the reparation plans offered by Dawes and Young. In the columns
of the Wiederaufbau, the idea of a powerful coalition of the
centre partiesPresident Ebert became one of its strongest
partisansfound unequivocal support; currency reform was also
discussed and concrete proposals made. Helphand himself
argued convincingly in favour of the reform; it later took the
shape of the Rentenmark.17
But behind the sober pages of the newspaper there existed, in
editorial and financial matters, a highly complex situation. Helphand was the official publisher; Moritz Bonn, the editor, remained
anonymous, according to the provision he had made when he
accepted the job. But there was another anonymous person
connected with Wiederaufbau. This was Hugo Stinnes, the Ruhr
industrialist, and one of the richest men in Germany.
During the war Stinnes had skilfully combined his coal mines
and transport companies with a number of steel works into a
self-contained empire. Apart from their wealth and political
16
17
Parvus, 'Das russische Problem', Wiederaufbau, No. 1, May 1922.

Parvus, 'Die Sanierung der deutschen Staatsfinanzen, Wiederaufbau, No. 23.
274
ambition, Stinnes and Helphand had little in common. Stinnes

was an unassuming, modest man, deeply nationally conscious: as
a Reichstag deputy of the nationalist Volkspartei, and as a leading
Ruhr industrialist, he exercised a powerful influence on Germany's reparation policies. His views on this problem were at
first sharply opposed to those of Helphand. Stinnes had made a
name for himself as a critic of the Versailles treaty, who had
lashed Rathenau's and Wirth's 'policy of fulfilment' of Germany's
financial obligations.
In April 1922, however, the attitude of Stinnes to reparations
and, with it, to Germany's relations with France, began to change.
In that month he concluded an agreement with Marquis de
Lubersac, the President of the Confdration Gnrale des Coopratives de Reconstruction des Rgions Dvastes. The agreement gave an opportunity to German industry to participate in
the reconstruction of France, by-passing the two governments.
The next step in the same direction was Stinnes' partnership in
Helphand's goodwill publication. Both men treated the matter

with the utmost discretion: neither Bonn nor Jackh knew about
Stinnes' interest in the newspaper. It is possible that Helphand
saw himself as a socialist counterpart of Stinnes; he may have
made his last attempt to expropriate the expropriators.
Despite the generous support of Stinnes, the Wiederaufbau
soon ran into financial difficulties. The costs of the five-language
edition surprised the publisher himself; technical organization
was also lacking. There were difficulties and delays connected
with translating and then with editing the text: when a copy of
Wiederaufbau eventually appeared, it was not quite up to date.
Helphand asked for additional subsidies: when, instead of enthusiasm, he encountered hesitation on the part of Stinnes, he
threatened to make a public statement on the financing of the
newspaper up to date. The Wiederaufbau received its final
subsidy from the Ruhr.
Nevertheless, half-way through the year 1923, Bonn resigned
the editorship and the whole project was mercifully killed. After
the appearance of fifty-one issues, the last Wiederaufbau was
published on 17 September 1923.
The closure of the newspaper completed Helphand's gradual
Schwanenwerder 275
withdrawal from public life. His health had been failing since the
end of the war; the sparks of his tremendous vitality were now
fast dying out. He suffered severe rheumatic pains, and his heartbeat was not as regular as it should have been. He spent much of
his time taking the waters at Marienbad; his friends in Berlin
noticed that he was increasingly relying on Schwanenwerder to
provide him with the peace he needed.
Nevertheless, hostile press reports on orgies at Helphand's
house continued to appear. The enemies of the Weimar Republic
needed Helphand for their agitation: he had received from them,
in the summer of 1922, an unwanted proof of his political stature.
His name appeared on a list circulating in the Femekreisa
right-wing terrorist organization of discharged officersof
persons who were to be liquidated. In September 1922, two
former officers called Krull and Bracht began to prepare Helphand's assassination. They chose a rather complicated way of
carrying out their plan: they intended to blow up the house at
Schwanenwerder. They were arrested before they could strike.18
Had Krull and Bracht succeeded in assassinating Helphand,
they would have killed a man who was fast approaching the end of
his physical reserves. His former mode of life did not make for
longevity. After the collapse of the Wiederaufbau project, there
still remained Die Glocke: although its front page now bore
Helphand's name, he no longer bothered to write for it. There
remained two things for him to do. He married his secretary, a
young Bavarian girl who, many years later, preferred not to be
reminded of this brief episode in her life. And finally, he saw to
the destruction of his private papers: it is likely that a bonfire in
the garden of Schwanenwerder took care of that.
On 12 December 1924, a heart attack put an end to Helphand's
life.
18
Ernst von Salomon, Der Fragebogen, Hamburg, 1951, p. 128. Vorwrts, 22 September
1922.
Epilogue
It was on 17 December 1924 that a small party assembled at the Wilmersdorf crematorium in Berlin. Helphand's
funeral was neither a family nor a religious occasion: it was a
socialist ceremony. There was a magnificent wreath from the
Danish comrades; the principal speakers were Georg Gradnauer
and Otto Wels, who represented the German party executive.
As they had no liking for the ritual formulas of religion, they
expressed their grief in mundane terms; they were clearly moved
by a desire to do well by their departed comrade, but, above all,
to do so quickly.
It seemed that Helphand's name and his diverse achievements
would soon be forgotten, and that no one would care much if they
were. Die Glocke reported on the memorial service for its founder
and, six weeks later, itself ceased publication. Helphand's publishing house, the Verlag fur Sozialwissenschaft, was wound
up at the same time, and the late owner's assets in Berlin were
sufficient to cover the firm's deficit. His friends and relatives
who searched the house at Schwanenwerder found neither any
political papers, nor a last will. It was improbable that Helphand's
great fortune could have disappeared, and rumours started to
circulate that money had been deposited in numbered accounts
in Switzerland. There was, however, no concrete proof; the
search continues.
In political pamphleteering alone, Helphand's name retained
a certain evil significance. The enemies of the Weimar Republic
used it often and effectively, and their usages resulted in some
bizarre distortions of the dead man's memory. The majority of
German socialists themselves preferred to forget Helphand
altogether. In the large German socialist family of well-behaved
and mediocre children, he was obviously the black sheep. And on
Epilogue
277
the few occasions when they remembered him, they did so without sympathy. One of them came to regard Helphand's activities
as a 'mixture of opinionation and business', a mixture of which he
disapproved; another remembered a grand dinner at Schwanenwerder, which irritated him and left him spiritually hungry. The
world Helphand inhabited had, in this socialist's view, nothing
to do with socialism.
In his speech at Helphand's funeral, Georg Gradnauer recalled how Helphand had once said: 'We love the high tide of
life.' His few friends in Germany remembered him as someone
with an immense will to live, as a massive figure, larger than life.
Gradnauer's recollection was kindly and perceptive: it indicated
the perplexity that Helphand had caused among the German
socialists. It meant, moreover, that somehow he had surpassed
their understanding.
There can be no doubt that Helphand's untrammelled vitality,
his personal and political independence, the range and keenness
of his intellect, had placed him head and shoulders above his
contemporaries in the socialist movement. But they distrusted his
volatile, unbounded character, and Helphand himself gave them
too many occasions on which to be contemptuous. In the fullness
of time, his comrades grasped every single one. By 1914 he had
broken all the unwritten rules of German socialism. Helphand
showed too much interest in women, in money, and there existed
doubts as to his financial probity. In addition, the company he
kept was not always exclusively socialist.
There was the dilemma of Helphand's character. The German
socialists had never been able to comprehend it in its entirety,
and their suspicions made them, after his death, not reluctant to
accept a conspiracy of silence. In fact, they knew less than they
thought they knew. In December 1924, the funeral orators were
sentimental about a life in which sentiment had played only a
small part. Had they known all, they would have said that this
had been a life of extreme complexity, and that many of its aspects
had at the time remained entirely hidden from their view.
Only Helphand's activities as a writer had been entirely public;
it was by them alone that he had wanted to be judged, in his late
middle age. In the last instance, Helphand was an intellectual. As
M.R.-T
278
a young man, he had believed in the power of the printed word to

resolve his problems and doubts. He had gone abroad for the
first time when he was nineteen years old, not because of a
desire to see the world outside Russia, but because he wanted to
read the revolutionary writings that were banned by the Tsarist
authorities.
He had a writer's temperament but a politician's interests.
Like Karl Marx, he did not want only to describe and understand
the world: he wanted to change it. Helphand was personally
ambitious, and when he became a socialist journalist in Germany,
he thought of writing as a means of emerging from obscurity into
prominence, even as a means of achieving political power.
Neither the rewards of writing, nor the power of writing to influence the actions of men, matched up to Helphand's expectations. Despite the sustained effort to disengage himself from his
Russian background, there remained in him too much of the
uncompromising Russian intelligent. He had no feelings for the
ties of loyalty that bound together the German party leadership,
and he remained a revolutionary in a movement which was about
to reject revolution as a means of social advancement.
The excellence of Helphand's theoretical writing was never
properly acknowledged. He had not produced the Marxist
magnum opus that was expected of him; his ideas were scattered
over too many newspaper articles and pamphlets. The Russian
socialists understood his revolutionary fervour better than had
the German socialists, and it was among his compatriots that
Helphand's views found their most receptive audience. But again,
they were either misunderstood or misapplied.
In one notable instance, Lev Trotsky, one of the best friends
Helphand had ever had, parted company with him and struck
out in a direction where Helphand could not follow. Helphand
broke off the 'intellectual partnership' with Trotsky because he
fully shared in the dominant tradition of nineteenth-century
socialism: a socialist democratic tradition, in the liberal meaning
of the word. Helphand's writing was meant to be a guide to
political action; the advance of socialism was his aim, and revolution one of its most important means. In this regard, Helphand's
attitude was all-embracing, or, as his enemies would have put it,
Epilogue
279
indiscriminate. In order to advance the cause of socialism, Helphand was ready to employ any means at his disposal: revolution
in Russia, elections in Prussia, the diplomats in Berlin. In this sense,
there was a continuity between his writing and political action.
Many of Helphand's former friends denied that continuity
existed in his life. Both Lev Trotsky and Karl Radek pointed at a
sudden break: it was supposed to have occurred in the summer of
1914, when Helphand apparently became a 'socialist chauvinist',
and gave support to the war policy of the German Government.
They were quite wrong. Helphand was neither a simpleton nor a
monomaniac: in 1914, his life was not dedicated to one single
pursuit, or governed by one all-pervading habit that could be
suddenly broken off and replaced by another. The change in
Helphandit did not take place in full view of either his Russian
or his German comradesoccurred for different reasons and at a
different time.
Soon after the turn of the century Helphand appeared to be
working like a powerful dynamo, but without any machinery to
drive. And then, in his early middle age, everything started to go
wrong for him. His friendships were ruined; his ideas misunderstood or unnoticed; he had failed dismally as a leader of men, and
finally, a web of rumour and scandal started to collect around his
name.
Had he stayed on in Germany, he would have paid a high
price for his characteristic blend of ambition and carelessness.
At best, he would have disappeared among the faceless supporters
of a lost cause. He went to Constantinople instead, and his stay
there was of decisive importance. He was able to cut off the ties
that bound him to past failures and disappointments, and establish the pattern that was to dominate his activities until the end of
his life. He learned to convert information and ideas into hard cash
die klingende Mnze, pure music to his ear, and so long denied
himrather than into the monotonous, black and white columns
of a newspaper; he explored the exclusive avenues that connected the world of money with the world of politics.
He became interested in political influence rather than in the
exercise of direct political power: he was the stage manager, and
not an actor, in the drama that was about to begin. When the
280
Great War finally broke out, Helphand was in a better position to

advance the cause of his choice than ever before. It was still the
cause of socialism, and, closely connected, the downfall of the
Tsarist regime he so much abhorred. When, early in 1915, he
came to see the German Ambassador to Constantinople, he had
a splendid offer to make.
Russia's defeat and war on one front only was the prospect
he held out to the German Government. But of this partnership,
Helphand expected even more himself. The armed might of
Germany would accomplish what decades of peaceful development had left undonethe destruction of Tsarism and subsequent socialist victory. It was under Helphand's guidance that
Imperial Germany launched a campaign of unrestricted political
warfare on Russia. But there was a third party to the game
Lenin and the Bolsheviksand when it ended, the winnings were
unevenly distributed.
In the middle game, the Imperial German Government had a
remarkable run of luck. The German war lords concluded peace
with the Bolsheviks and then, for a few glorious weeks in the
spring of 1918, victory in the west appeared to lie within their
grasp. Ultimately, however, the Bolsheviks took all. When
the German Empire was swept away by defeat at the front
and by revolution in Berlin, Lenin's party was established in
power in Petrograd. There was no reason why the Bolsheviks
should have acknowledged any other assistance in their rise to
political prominenceapart from the desire of the Russian nation
to be ruled by them and no one else. Helphand, who had brought
the original party together, was the principal loser. He had intended to use Imperial Germany for his purposes: he was used
himself, and, in the process, he became too much a part of this
Germany. Lenin shed his undesirable ally as soon as he could
conveniently do so. There was no bond of sympathy between
Helphand and the newly-established regime in Russia.
Although Helphand's grand strategy brought him no political
rewards, there was nothing tragic in its failure. He had always
found it difficult to serve one cause, stay in one place, or with one
woman. All along, he had been playing for high financial stakes
and, in this regard, he was entirely successful. His trade interests
Epilogue
281
spanned Europe from Copenhagen to Constantinople, and by the

the end of the war he was one of the richest men in Germany.
In a way, Helphand's success as a businessman jeopardized his
political activities. It appeared to many socialists that it would be
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to remain one of them. It was an attitude which was
succinctly summed up in the words of a German comrade about
Vandervelde, the Belgian party leader: 'He cannot be a socialist,
he likes champagne.' In this view, Helphand had done worse
than to like champagne; he could even buy his own. In addition,
he took far too literally the lesson he had learned in Turkey: that
money could be made through political power, and that political
power could be reached through money. He never seemed to
appreciate the intricate patterns into which the two basic strands
could be woven, especially in the industrially advanced, or
politically sophisticated, societies.
It is possible that, after the war, Helphand wished for a different kind of reward. By then, however, he was ageing rapidly,
the world he had loved and of which he had become a part had
disappeared. The master plan had somehow failed, probably
because of the human element involved: the historicist had been
deceived by history. The excitement of revolutions had died
down, and the drab, impoverished present had to be administered
by new bureaucrats, perhaps even duller than the old ones.
Helphand's personal tragedy lay in the failure of a movement.
The disastrous developments, for European socialism, in the
summer of 1914 have been generally recognized. But there was a
worse shock to come. A few months after the Bolshevik seizure
of power in 1917, it became clear that a socialist dictatorship had
been introduced in Russia: until then, the possibility of such a
development had eluded the imaginative grasp of most European
socialists. At the same time, while the new Russian rulers staked
their claim to the Marxist inheritance of European socialism,
many socialists farther west were turning from this inheritance.
In the end they renounced the great fortune of Helphand's
youth completely, and with it they renounced Helphand himself.
This would have disappointed him; the reasons for the present
revival of interest in his person would have pleased him even less.
Bibliography
A. Unpublished Material
Documents from the German Foreign Ministry deposited in Bonn, and
their copies at the Public Record Office, London, and St. Antony's
College, Oxford.
Documents of the Austrian Foreign Ministry at the Haus-, Hof- und
Staatsarchiv, Vienna.
The diary of Eduard David; Sdekum Nachlass; Wolfgang Heine's
Politische Aufzeichnungen, at Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
The diary of Bruno Schnlank at the Archives of the German Social
Democrat Party, Bonn.
Nachlass Kautsky at the International Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam.
Helphand's letters in the private collection of Bruno Schnlank, jun.,
Zrich.
Nachlass Helphand at the Hauptarchiv, Berlin.
B. Published Documents
Balabanov, M., Ot 1905 k 1917g.: massovoye rabocheie dvizhenie. Moscow,
1927.
Browder, R. P. and Kerensky, A. F. (editors), The Provisional Government 1917, 3 vols., Stanford, 1962.
Bunyan, J. and Fisher, H. H., The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1918,
Documents and Materials, Stanford, 1934.
Fleer, N. G., Rabocheie dvizhenie v gody voiny, Moscow, 1923.
Gankin, O. H. and Fisher, H. H., The Bolsheviks and the World War.
The Origins of the Third International, London, 1940.
Grebing, H., 'So macht man Revolution', Politische Studien, Munich,
1957, pp. 221-34.
Greve, B. B., Burzhuaziya na kanune Fevralskoi Revolyutsii, Moscow,

1927.
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283
Hahlweg, W., Lenins Ruckkehr nach Russland 1917. Die deutschen

Akten, Leiden, 1957.
Katkov, G., 'German Foreign Oflice documents on financial support to
the Bolsheviks in 1917', International Affairs, XXXII, 1956, pp.
181-9.
Protokoll der Sitzung des erweiterten Parteiausschusses am 18 und 19

April 1917 im Reichstagsgebdude zu Berlin, Berlin, 1917.
Protokoll des Parteitags der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands in
Stuttgart, Berlin, 1898.
Protokoll des Parteitags der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands in
Wrzburg, Berlin, 1917.
Protokoly tsentralnovo komiteta RSDRP(b), Avgust 1917Fevral 1918,
Moscow, 1958.
Revolyutsiya 1905-1907 gg. v Rossii, Dokumenty i Materialy, vol. 1,
Moscow, 1957.
Verhandlungen des deutschen Reichstags, XIII. Legislaturperiode, II,
Session, vol. 311, Berlin, 1917.
Zechlin, E., 'Friedensbestrebungen und Revolutionierungsversuche',

Das Parlament, 17 May 1961, 14 June 1961, 21 June 1961, 15 May
1963, 22 May 1963.
Zeman, Z. A. B., Germany and the Revolution in Russia 1915-1918,

London, 1958.
C. Published Correspondence
Adler, V., Briefwechsel mit August Bebel und Karl Kautsky, edited by
Friedrich Adler, Vienna, 1954.
Axelrod, P. B., Materialy po istorii russkovo revolyutsionnovo dvizheniya, Tom I: Pisma Axelroda i Martova, 1901-1916, Berlin, 1924.
Krupskaya, N. K., Correspondence in Istoricheskii Arkhiv, 1960, vol. 3,
pp. 106-25.
Lenin, V. I., Correspondence in Leninskii Sbornik, vols. XIII, XXXVI.

The Letters of Lenin, ed. by E. Hill and D. Mudie, London, 1936.
Luxemburg, R., 'Einige Briefe Rosa Luxemburgs und andere Dokumente', Bulletin of the International Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam, 1952, No. 1.
Plekhanov, G. V., Perepiska G. V. Plekhanova iP. B. Axelroda, Moscow,
1925.
Potresov, A. N. and Nikolaevski, B. I. (editors), Sotsial-demokraticheskoe
dvizhenie v Rossii, materialy, Moscow, 1928.
284
D. Selected Articles and Books by Helphand

Unus, 'Die preussischen Landtagswahlen', NZ, 1893-4, vol. 1, pp.
37-46.
Parvus, 'Keinen Mann und keinen Groschen', NZ, 1894-5, vol. 2,
pp. 80-87.
'Staatsstreich und politischer Massenstreik', JVZ, 1895-6, vol. 2, pp.

199-206.
Die Gewerkschaflen und die Sozialdemokratie, Dresden, 1896.

Marineforderungen, Kolonialpolitik und Arbeiterinteressen, Dresden,
1898.
C. Lehmann and Parvus: Das hungernde Russland, Reiseeindrilcke,

Beobachtungen, Untersuchungen, Stuttgart, 1900.
Parvus, Handelskrisis und Gewerkschaflen, Munich, 1901.
'Der Opportunismus in der Praxis', JVZ, 1900-1, vol. 2, pp. 609-15,
786-94.
Pismo k N. Leninu, Geneva, 1904.

V chem my raskhodimsya, Geneva, 1905.
L. D. Trotsky: Do devyatovo Yanvarya, (with an introduction by
Parvus), Geneva, 1905.
Parvus, Rossiya i revolyutsiya, St. Petersburg, 1906.
Die Reichstagwahlen und die Arbeiterschaft, Dresden, 1907.
Die Kolonialpolitik und der Zusammenbruch, Berlin, 1907.
In der russischen Bastille wdhrend der Revolution, Dresden, 1907.
Die Banken, der Staat und die Industrie, Dresden, 1910.
Der Staat, die Industrie und der Sozialismus, Dresden, 1910.
Der Klassenkampf des Proletariats, Berlin, 1911.
The Results of the Great War. If Germany Wins, Constantinople,
1915 (Turkish).
The Results of the Great War. If England Wins, Constantinople,

1914 (Turkish).
The Arteries of Turkey and the Debts of the Empire, Constantinople,

1914 (Turkish).
Na oboronu demokratiiprotitzarismu, Constantinople, 1914.

'Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie. Die Hochburg des Sozialismus', Die
Glocke, 1915, pp. 4-52.

'Fiir die Demokratiegegen den Zarismus', Glocke, 1915, pp. 77-85.
'Der Freiheit eine Gasse', Glocke, 1915, pp. 117-22.
'Die internationale sozialistische Bewegung', Glocke, 1915,pp. 144-7.
'Meine Stellungnahme zum Krieg. I. Vorrede zu der ukrainischen
Ausgabe der Schrift: Fr die Demokratiegegen den Zarismus.
Bibliography
285
II. Offener Brief an die Zeitung "Nasche Slowo" in Paris', Glocke, 1915,
pp. 148-62.
T)as neue Russland', Glocke, 1915, pp. 173-81.
'Die franzsische Offensive und die Arbeiter', Glocke, 1915, pp.
237-41.
'Franz Mehring zum 70. Geburtstag', Glocke, 1915, p. 721.

'Ein Gespch zur Kriegszeit', Glocke, 1916, pp. 24-35.
'Einheit der Partei', Glocke, 1916, pp. 35-40.
'Der Sieg der russischen Revolution', Glocke, 1916, pp. 961-70.
'Die Bolschewiki. Vorrede zu der danischen Ausgabe der Schrift
"Meine Antwort an Kerenski und Co." ', Glocke, 1917, pp. 521-33.
'Die Beschlagnahme der Privatbanken durch die Bolschewiki
(Aus der russischen Zeitschrift "Iswne" in Stockholm)\Glocke, 1917,
pp. 689-93.
'Das soziale Programm der Bolschewiki', Glocke, 1917, pp. 761-6.

Meine Antwort an Kerenski und Co., Berlin, 1917.
Die soziale Bilanz des Krieges, Berlin, 1917.
Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, Berlin, 1918.
'Der bolschewistische Friede', Glocke, 1918, pp. 197-209.
'Notizen zur Kanzlerkrise', Glocke, 1918, pp. 901-5.
'Die Entente und der Bolschewismus', Glocke, 1919, pp. 897-902.
'Der Fall Kautsky', Glocke, 1919, pp. 1213-20.
'Philister ber mich! Meine Antwort an Karl Kautsky', Glocke, 1919,
pp. 1331-9.
'Meine Entfernung aus der Schweiz', Glocke, 1920, pp. 1482-9,

1507-14.
'Deutschland und Russland', Glocke, 1919, pp. 1525-8.

Briefe an die deutschen Arbeiter, Berlin, 1919.
Aufbau und Wiedergutmachung, Berlin, 1921.
Der wirtschaftliche Rettungsweg, Berlin, 1922.
'Das russische Problem', Wiederaufbau, 1922-3, pp. 1-5.
'Die russische Frage in Genua', Wiederaufbau, 1922-3, pp. 10-12.
E. Collected Works
Blagoev, D., Izbrany Proizvedeniya v dva toma, Sofia, 1951.
Gorki, M., Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 7.
Lenin, V. I., Sochineniya (2nd and 3rd editions), vols. XVH-XXIV.
Litwak, A., Geklibene Schriftn, New York, 1945.
Luxemburg, R., Gesammelte Werke, vols. 3, 4, and 6.
Trotsky, L. D., Sochineniya, vol. 3, Moscow-Leningrad, 1926.
Vorovski, V. V., Sochineniya, vol. 1, Moscow, 1933.
286
F. Secondary Works and Articles

Alexinsky, G., Du Tsarisme au Communisme. La Revolution Russe, ses
Causesses Effets, Paris, 1923.
Avdeev, N., Revolyutsiya 1917 goda (Khronika Sobytii), Moscow, 1923.
Bernstein, E., 'Die preussischen Landtagswahlen und die Sozialdemokratie', NZ, 1892-3, vol. 2, pp. 772-8.
'Der Streik als politisches Kampfmittel', NZ, 1893-4, vol. 2, pp.
687-90.
'Die Zusammenbruchs-Theorie und die Kolonialpolitik', JVZ, 189798, vol. 1, pp. 548-57.
Bogart, E. L., War Costs and their Financing, London-New York, 1921.
Chesnais, P. G., Parvus et le parti socialiste danois. Paris, 1918.
Cunow, H., Parteizusammenbruch? Ein offenes Wort zum inner en
Parteistreit, Berlin, 1915.
David, E., Die Sozialdemokratie im Weltkrieg, Berlin, 1915.
Deutscher, I., The Prophet ArmedTrotsky 1879-1921, London, 1954.
Epstein, K., Mathias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy,
Princeton, 1959.
Fainsod, M., International Socialism and the World War, Harvard
University Press, 1935.
Fester, R., Die politischen Kmpfe um den Frieden 1916-1918 und das
Deutschtum, Berlin, 1938.
Fischart, J., Das alte und das neue System. Die politischen Kpfe Deutschlands. Berlin, 1919.
Fischer, F., Griff nach der Weltmacht, Dsseldorf, 1961.
Frank, V., 'Russians and Germans. An Ambivalent Heritage', Survey,
No. 44-45, 1962, pp. 66-73.
Frohlich, P., Rosa Luxemburg. Gedankeund Tat, 2nd ed., Hamburg, 1949.
Futrell, M., Northern Underground. Episodes of Russian Revolutionary
Transport and Communications through Scandinavia and Finland
1863-1917, London, 1963.
Gatzke, H. W., Germany's Drive to the West (Drang nach Westen). A Study
in Germany's War Aims during the First World War, Baltimore, 1950.
Gorin, P., Ocherki po istorii sovetov rabotchikh delegatov v 1905 g.,
2nd ed., Moscow, 1930.
Grebing, H., 'sterreich-Ungarn und die "Ukrainische Aktion" 19141918', Jahrbcher fr Geschichte Osteuropas, 1959, pp. 270-83.
Haenisch, K., Parvus, Ein Blatt der Erinnerung, Berlin, 1925.
Krieg und Sozialdemokratie, Berlin, 1915.
Brief an Radek, Berlin, 1914.
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1870-1920, Gttingen, 1956.
Holzle, E., Der Osten im ersten Weltkrieg, Leipzig, 1944.

Kennan, G., 'The Sisson Documents', Journal of Modern History, vol.
28, 1956,
pp. 130-54.
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London, 1956.
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Koszyk, K., Zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur. Die sozialdemokratische
Presse von 1914-1933, Heidelberg, 1958.
Legters, L. H., 'Karl Radek als Sprachrohr des Bolschewismus', Forschungen zur osteuropdischen Geschichte, vol. 7, 1959, pp. 196-322.
Lenach, F., Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie und der Weltkrieg, Leipzig,
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Luxemburg, R., Sozialreform oder Revolution, Leipzig, 1899.

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Matthias, E., Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie und der Osten, Tubingen,
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Melgunov, P. S., Zolotoi nemetskii klyuch k bolshevitskoi revolyutsii,
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Nikitine, B. V., The Fatal Years, London, 1938.

Nolde, B. E., Russia in the Economic War, New Haven, 1928.
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Piashev, N., Vorovski, Moscow, 1959.

Flatten, F., Die Reise Lenins durch Deutschland im plombierten Wagen,
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Plekhanov, G., Nashi Raznoglasiya, Geneva, 1884.

Possony, St. T., Jahrhundert des Aufruhrs, Munich, 1956.
Prager, E., Geschichte der USPD, Berlin, 1921.
Ritter, G. A., Die Arbeiterbewegung im Wilhelminischen Reich. Die
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288
Rothfels, H., 'Marxismus und auswrtige Politik', Deutscher Staat und

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Schorske, C. E., German Social Democracy 1905-1917. The Development

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H. Newspapers and Journals

Arbeiterzeitung, 1914-18, Vienna.
Aus der Weltpolitik, 1900-5, Munich.
Bakinskii Rabochii, 1925, Baku.
Berliner Tageblatt, 1924, Berlin.

Bote der russischen Revolution, 1917, Stockholm.
Das Freie Wort, 1931, Berlin.
Der Angriff, 1934, Berlin.
Die Glocke, 1915-25, Munich, Berlin.
Die Neue Zeit, 1891-1925, Stuttgart.

Die Welt, 1957, Hamburg.
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290
Die Zukunft, 1914-25, Berlin.

Freie Presse, 1918, Elberfeld-Barmen.
Hamburger Echo, 1915-18, Hamburg.
Humanit, 1914-18, Paris.
Internationale Korrespondenz, 1915-18, Berlin.
Iskra, 1900-5, Munich, London, Geneva.
Korrespondenz Prawda, 1917, Stockholm.
Kreuzzeitung, 1925, Berlin.
Leipziger Volkszeitung, 1894-1925, Leipzig.
Munchener Post, 1900-25, Munich.
Nackalo, 1905, St. Petersburg.
Nashe Slovo, 1915, Paris.
Novaya Zhizn, 1905, Petrograd.
Novaya Zhizn, ed. Maxim Gorki, 1917-18, Petrograd.
Pravda, 1917-25, Moscow.
Proletarskaya revolyutsiya, 1921-41, Moscow.
Sdchsische Arbeiterzeitung, 1896-1925, Dresden.
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Times Literary Supplement, 1958, London.
Vorwrts, 1891-1925, Berlin.
Wiederaufbau, 1923-4, Berlin.
Zarya, 1901-2, Geneva-Stuttgart.
Index
Abramovich, R., cited, 129, 143
Absolutism, 21, 62, 85, 131, 140, 174
Achtuhrabendblatt, 264
Adler, Viktor, 26-27, 31
AEG (firm), 272
Afghanistan, 254
Africa, 41,105
Agent (German), H. as, 141, 154, 158,
178,228-9
Agent provocateur, H. described as, 195, 225
Albrecht, 199
Alexander II, Tsar, 5-6, 10
Alexander III, Tsar, 6, 53
Alexinski, G. A., 123, 195, 225, 227
Alien, H. as : see Citizenship
Allied Powers (Entente), 131, 139, 163,
182, 185, 197-8, 209, 213, 258-8
Almanacks, propaganda, 254-6, 263-5
Alsace-Lorraine, 221
Amatis (female artiste), 197
America, 15, 41, 148, 197, 224, 232; and
Europe, 24-25, 257; Trotsky in, 180
Amsterdam, 148
Anatolia, 132
Annexations and indemnities, peace
without, 214, 218, 236, 249-50, 252
Annual Register, quoted, 51
Antisemitism: see Jews
Arbeiterzeitung (Vienna), 26
Arbejdernes Faellesorganisations BraendselfortningA/S, 199
Armand, Inessa, 158
Armed uprising, H. on, 91-92, 97-98
Armenia and Armenians, 9, 128, 133-4,
146
Asia, 105
'Asiatic' and 'Russian', 54
Assassination plot against H., 275
Auer, Ignas, 40, 45, 153
Aufbau und Wiedergutmachung, 270-1
Aurora (factory), 259
Aus der Weltpolitik, 68-69, 107, 127;
cited, 35, 37, 43, 47, 60
Austria and Austria-Hungary, 5, 132,
156, 217, 220, 234, 260; activities

against Tsarist Empire, 133, 135,
142, 175; constitution, 6,; naturalization attempt by H. in, 26-27;
passports, 52-53, 95, 217; Russian
revolution, effect, 101, 235-6; socialists, 26, 125, 141, 212, 222, 239; unpublished documents, cited, 133
Auswartiges Ami, see Germany: Foreign
Ministry
Autocracy, 6, 61
Avant-garde mission of Russian proletariat,
64, no
Avanti, 143
Avdeev, N., cited, 221
Axclrod, Pavel Borisovich, 14, 20, 55-56,
61-62,83, 161
Baake, K., 194
Babel, Isaac, 10
Baden, Prince Max von, 258
Baier: see Moor, Karl
Baku, 147
Bakunin, M. A., 6, 96
Balabanoff, Angelica, 20
Balkans, 138, 140, 151, 214; federation
proposed, 127; Helphand's travels
in, 128, 148, 155; Turkish influence
declining, 5, 125-7; Ukrainians'
mission, 133-4; wars, 128
Baltic Sea, 206
Baltic works, 147
Balzac, Honor de, 272
Banco di Roma, 272
Banishment to Siberia: see Siberia
Banks, threatened withdrawal of deposits,
89-90; nationalization, 118-20,
250-1
'Barfuss, Dr.' (nickname for H.), 34
Barmen, 238, 240
Basle University, 16-19, 21, 74
Basok-Melenevski, Marian: see Melenevski
Bauer, Gustav, 213, 215, 223
Baumeister, Albert, 194
292
Index
Bavaria, 55-56, 58-59; agreement with

Centre Party, 43-44; budget, 28-30;
censorship, 170-1; Grown Prince,
234; Helphand, and citizenship, 27;
H.'s residence in (see also Munich),
48, 58; socialists, 22, 28-30, 43-44
Bebel, August, 39, 43-44, 74, 109, 115,
121, 153, 173; quoted, 31, 36-37,
118; on H., 37, 40, 44, 46; at Lbeck
congress, 46, 48; and Gorki affair,
124
Beer, Max, 270
Belinski, V. G., 14
Berchtold, Count von, 133
Berezino, H's birthplace, 7; family move
to Odessa after fire, 7, 55
Bergen, Diego von, 184, 212, 231-2, 235,
240, 248, 253
Berlin, H. moves to (1891), 23; expelled
from (1893), 25-26; Trotsky leaves
(1907), 109; expulsion order against
H. withdrawn, 152-4; H.'s residence
in, 193; publishing house transferred
to (1916), 194; H.'s visits to, 211-2,
219, 233, 235, 248, 262-3, 266-7;
police force chief, 32
Berlin School of Politics, 272
Berliner Tageblatt,1
Berne, 16, 156, 209, 229, 261
Berne copyright convention (1886), 69
Berner Tagwacht, 203

Bernstein, Eduard, 35, 118, 121, 231, 270;
on participation in elections, 27-28;
articles on 'Problems of Socialism',
37-38; H.'s attacks on, 38-43, 45,
48, 51, 154, 174; Kautsky's alliance
with, 153
Bernstorff, Count, 272
Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald von, 2,
143, 169, 183-4,209
Bickel (public prosecutor), 261
Bismarck, Prince, 5, 21, 28, 37
Black Hundreds organization, 98
Black Sea, 9-10, 15, 69, 134, 136, 147, 206
Blagoev, Dimitar, 140
'Bloody Sunday' (1905), 75-76, 180, 188
Bodensee, 266
Bohemia, 108
Bohm-Bawerk, E.,23
Bolsheviks:
Accused of treasonable activities after
July 1917 rising, 225-32
Acquisition of power by proletariat,

attitude to, 79-80
Dictatorship, and, 120
Helphand and, 7981, 147-9, *57j X78,

181, 209, 216-20, 222-5, 249, 268,
280-1; his campaign against (1918),
2506; relations with, 256; suspected
Bolshevik agent, 261-2
Key place in revolutionary plans,
148-8,157
Leader: see Lenin
Party funds, 163, 218-9, 231; Gorki
royalties for: see under Gorki
Policy, 79-81, 83-84, 88, 207
Pro-German group, 246
Provisional Government, and, 220,
225,227-8, 230-3
Revolution (1905), and, 91, 122
Revolution (November 1917), seize
power, 234-45 (see also under Revolutions)
Split with Mensheviks (1903), 59-62,
65,122, 137,147,158
Stockholm Foreign Mission: see under
Stockholm
Underground organization, 159, 181,
226
Bonn, M. J., 269, 272-4
Borbjerg, F., 213-5, 221-3
Bote der russischen Revolution, 219, 228
Bourgeoisie, H.'s attitude to, 17, 19, 21, 24,
44-45, 74, 76-79, 114, 193; Trotsky's
attacks on, 68; clash with workers'
movement, 87-88; Haenisch and, 102
Bracht, 275
Branting, Hjalmar, 213
Breslau congress (1895), 32
Brest-Litovsk, treaty of, 243-4, 248-9,
252-3
Breuer, Robert, 269
Britain: see Great Britain
Brockdorff-Rantzau, Count von, 190-1,
195, 215, 224, 231-2, 240, 244, 2489, 253, 272; biographical, 166; onH.,
152,183-4; meetings with H., 166-8,
179-81, 189, 199, 207-11, 217, 238;
H.'s memorandum to (1915), 181-4,
memorandum to Chancellor, 183-7 >
and Danish coal business, 199, 201-4;
and peace with Russia, 207-9, 21112
Bronstein, Lev Davidovich: see Trotsky
Browder, R. P., cited, 226-7
Brupbacher, F., cited, 17
Brusilov, General A. A., 224
Bucharest, 137, 141 148, 152, 155
Bcher, Professor Karl, 16, 18
Buchspan, 181
Index
Budget, socialists and support for, 28-30
Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich, 161-2, 180
Bulgaria, 57, 130-3, 135, 148, 198, 257;
socialists, 126-7, 131, 139-40, 222;
H. visits, 139-41
Blow, Bernhard von, 101, 103, 112
Burckhardt, Jacob, 16
Bureaucracy, 6, 77, 119
Burtsev, V., 123, 225
Bussche-Haddenhausen, von dem, 138-9,
141, 155, 236
Cafe Victoria, 194
Capital market, 118
Capitalist system, automatic 'breakdown'
theory, 34, 38, 42, 114, 173; Bernstein's views, 38, 41; development
of, 66, 75, 78, no; economic order,
104-5, 113-4; Helphand as capitalist, 204; international implications,
85, 111; social revolution and, 45,
64, 85, 117, 131, 215; socialists and,
19, 119; wars, and, 63, 104, 114
Cartels, 113
Casanova, 107
Casement, Roger, 230
Caucasus and Caucasians, 135, 140, 146,
207
Censorship, military, 171-2
Central Powers, 130, 132, 136, 149, 242-3
Chauvinism, German, 131, 150, 158, 178,
222; H. as chauvinist, 2, 140, 150,
155-6, 228, 279; 'revolutionary',
252; Scandinavian, 222
Cheidse, 221
Cheka, 250
Chemnitzer Volkstimme, 113, 170
Chernyshevski, N. G., 10, 96
Chesnais, P. G., cited, 199
Chicherin, G., 261
China, 115,254
Chudnovski, Georgi, 160
Ciano, Count, 72
Citizenship, H.'s search for a 'fatherland',
26-27, 154, 192-3; becomes Prussian
citizen (1916), 27, 192-4, 212, 241
Civil wars, 77, 91, 157, 259
Class struggle, 67, 77-80, 85, 88, 101,
112; H.'s views, 28, 36, 43-44, 63,
77-80,85, 114
Class Struggle of the Proletariat, The (1911),
113-16, 118
Clever Mechanics, 12
Coal trade, with Denmark, 199-205, 233,
256; with Russia, 256
M.R.-U
293
Cohen-Reuss, 233
Cohn, Louis, 171
Colonial Policy and the Breakdown, 104-5
Colonialism, 101, 104-5, 113
Communist Manifesto (1848), 12-14, 39
Communist parties, 115
Constantinople, H.'s stay in (1910-1915),
15, 126-44, 155,196,279-80
Constitutional democracy, 67
Co-operatives, 111
Copenhagen, 4, 15, 152, 159, 222-3, 2424, 248; H. moves to (1915), 160-5;
research institute, 160-2, 164, 194-6,
204,209,227; company setup, 164-5,
221; H.'s revolutionary-business
activities in, 178-80, 186, 189, 191,
194-9, 207, 214, 219, 226; H.'s
residence, 193, 214; German party
leaders' visit, 213-7
Copyright, 69, 127
Corn, H.'s dealings in, 128, 132
Cossacks, 98, 146
Coup d'tiat, possible reactionary, 35
Crimean War, 5
Cross Prison, 95-96
Cunow, Heinrich, 175-6, 194, 272
Currency, forged, 183; reform, 273
Customs barriers, 104-5, I13
Czech socialists, 222
Czecho-Slovakia, 262
Czernin, Count O., 234-5, 241, 251-2
Daily Mail, 256

Daily Telegraph, 261
Dandl, von, 259
Danielson, Nikolai, 12
David, Eduard, 31, 42, 154-5, 175-6, 223
Dawes plan, 273
Denmark (see also Copenhagen), 196205, coal business, 199-205, 233,
256; economic espionage in, 197;
economic ties with Britain, 198-9,
202; Helphand's activities in: see
under Copenhagen; neutrality, 204;
socialists, 198, 203, 242;
trade
unions, 198-202, 233
Deutsch, Lev, 14, 20, 91, 94, 98-99
Deutscher, I., cited, 64
Dickstein, S., 12
Dictatorship, 2, 75, 79, i n , 120, 251
Dietz, H. (publisher), 54. 57
'Dirty hands' reference, 246
Dnieper region, 10
Do devyatovo Tanvarya (Trotsky), 66; H.'s
introduction to, 76-79
294
Index
Falkenhayn, General Erich von, 150

Family, H. on the, 73-74
Famines, Russian, 24-25, 52, 54-55
Far East, 41
Feature-agency, 68, 113, 127
Femekreis, 275
Dresden, 26,32-40,51,68,107-8,238,240 Finland, 81, 146-7, 222, 228, 230, 239,
246, 250
Dresden congress (1903), 37, 44
First World War (and mentioned passim):
Dnaburg, 183
German documents on, 3
Dsseldorf, 103
Germany's position and policy, 230-41,
Dutch: see Netherlands
170, 190; possible effects of victory,
Dvorak, Albrecht, 126
178, 249-50, 257-8; offensive (1918),
Dynamite invented, 5
253; collapse, 257-9
Helphand, foretells, 130-1; subversive
Ebert, Friedrich, 153, 155, 213-5, 223,
activities, 128-69,179-91, 280
237, 239-40, 243, 255,263, 273
Peace offensive: see Peace
Economics newspaper, 271-5
Reduced to one-front engagement, 253
Economy, periodic crises, 38, 41, 63, 113,
Russia and, 108, 170, 179, 181-3, 187,
116; socialist programme, 118-20;
206-7, 209-11; military offensive,
war and competition, 131
224; separate peace: see under Peace
Ehrenburg, Ilya, 73
Social consequences, 194-5
Ehrlich, 223
Fischer, F., cited, 169, 254
Eichhorn, Emil, 32
Eight-hour day, 36-37, 78, 84-85, 87, 93, Fischer, Richard, 46
Fisher, H. H., cited, 181
207
Elections, non-participation in, 27-28, Fleer, N. G., cited, 188
'For DemocracyAgainst Tsarism', 130,
80, 116
'Elefant, Dr.' (nickname for H.), 23
134
Foreign policy, socialist, 104-5, IQ8
Emancipation of Labour Group, 14, 25
France, 15, 136, 150, 208, 249, 270-1;
Engels, Friedrich, 22, 24, 27, 31-32, 39,
and Germany, 5, 274; loans to Rus45,79,117
sia, 54; socialists, 20, 239
England: see Great Britain
Franco-German War, 208
Entente Powers; see Allied Powers
Frankfurt congress (1894), 29, 31
Enver Pasha, 136
Frankfurter Zeitung, 16
Erhardt, 46
Free trade, 41-42, 105
Ermanski, 81
Freightage agency, 200-1
Erzberger, Matthias, 220, 243
Frenkel, Eugenii, 90
Europe:
Frohme, 40
America and, 24-25, 257
Germany, possible effect of victory, Frstenberg, Prince Emil von, 241-2,
249-50, 257-8; hegemony in, 176,
251-2
Frstenberg, Jakob (Hanecki or Kuba),
249-50
178,180,210,216-7,219,235,238-9,
Position in 1867, 5-6
246-7; biographical, 162-3; head of
Proletariat, no-ii
Soviet National Bank, 165; managing
Reconstruction, 270-1
director of trading company, 196-7,
Russia's position in, 24-25; revolution
221; relationship with H., 225-9
and,84-85,101
Futrell, M., cited, 181
Russo-Japanese War, effect, 62-63
Socialists, 19-20, 34, 60, 88, 117, 152-3,
Galata bridge, 127
159, 168-9, 173,214,281
Gankin, O. H., cited, 181
Trading policy, 41-42
Gatchina Castle, 53
Unification, 42, 105, 271
Gazette de Lausanne, 256
Western, 13, 19-20
Geneva, 19, 55,67, 76, 137
Exhibitions, world, 54
Georgia and Georgians, 133-4, 146
Export-import enterprise, 164-5, I 9 I > 2ai
Dobrogeanu-Gherea: see Gherea

Dobrudja, 57, 126
Donets basin, 147, 168
Dorpat University, 16
Dortmund, 102, 103,112
Dortmunder Arbeiterzeitung, 102-3
Index
Gera, 47
Gerasimovich, Arshak, 160
German language, 19
Germany:
Agrarian agitation, 31-32, 34, 38, 56,
172-3
Army, newspaper, 194; creation of new,
263; officers' corps, 263
Catholic Church, 21
Centre party, 101, 103, 243, 273
Citizenship for Helphand: see Citizenship
Coal trade, with Denmark, 199-205;
with Sweden and other neutral
countries, 203
Colonial policy, 101, 104-5
Constitution, 6
Currency reform, 2 73
Eastern policy, 2, 169, 184-6, 213,
218
Economy, 38, 41
Elections, 101-4, 259
Europe, position in: see under Europe
First World War, and, 130-41, 170,
174, 178, 190, 249-50, 253, 257-9
Foreign Ministry, H. and, 2, 137, 14553; archives, 2-3, documents, 3, 132
France, and, 5, 274
General Staff, 191, 196-7, 210, 241
Helphand, his attitude to, 19-21, 1535, 192; moves to (1891), 21; activities in, 21-48; expulsion from Berlin
and Prussia (1893), 25-27, 71; expelled from Saxony (1898), 47. 51,
68, 71; from Gera, 47; in Munich,
51-52, 54-59; illegal visits, 82, 102,
113; his return to, after escape from
Russia (1906), 100, 102, 107,111-13;
leaves (1910), 124; Prussian expulsion order withdrawn (1915), 152;
issued with police pass, 152; returns
to Berlin, 143, 145, 154-5, 168-9,
184; audience in Foreign Ministry,
!
37> 145"~53 5 co-operation with
diplomats, 145-53, 159, 163, 167,
172, 224, 237, 240, 248-50; adviser
to German government, 152; Prussian citizenship (1916), 27, 192-4,
212, 241; as propagandist for, 144;
connexions with government, 2;
later visits to Berlin: see under Berlin
Naval Staff, 197
Parliament, 114, 259
Reichstag: see Reichstag
Republican parties, 271, 272
295
Revolution (1918): see under Revolutions

Rumania and, 138
Russia, relations with, 3, 137, 145-7,
1501: suggested alliance with, 105;
promised loan, 243; German economic penetration, 253-4, 256; treaty
with (1922), 273; trade with, 164-5,
197-8
Russian revolution (1905), and, 101-2,
112
Russian revolution (1917), and, 208

15, 221, 224-6, 233, 235-45, 249-50
'Sealed train' journey across: see under
Lenin
Social Democrat party: see Social
Democrat party, German
Unification under Bismarck, 5
Wars, and, 63
Weimar Republic: see that title
Gherea, Dobrogeanu-, 137-8
Gleicheit, 23
Cloche, Die, founded (1915), 168-72, 1769; Lenin's criticism of, 178-9, 229;
contributors, 194, 269; H. resumes
as publisher (1920), 270, 272, 275;
ceases publication (1925), 276; quoted or cited, 33, 71, 73, 130, 132, 136,
206, 222, 258, 26l, 263-4, 266
Gnedin, Ievgenii (alleged son of Helphand), 72-73

Goebbels, Josef, 1 2
Gold, use for payments, 89-90
Goldberg, 220
Goldenberg, J. P., 223
Goldman, Boris, 90
Golos (later Nashe Slovo, q.v.), 135, 148
Golos Sotsialdemokrata, 112
Gorin, P., cited, 90-91
Gorki, Maxim, 69-71; H.'s agreement
regarding royalties on play The Lower
Depths, 70-71; scandal over unpaid
royalties, 122-4, 153-4, 194,220
Gotha congress (1875), 21, 74; (1896),
36-37
Gradnauer, Georg, 32, 268, 276-7
Grain trade, H.'s dealings in, 15, 132
Great Britain, 15, 63, 105, 197; and First
World War, 150-1, 224; anti-British
campaign, 176; trade ties with Denmark, 198-9, 202
Great War: see First World War
Grebirig, H., cited, 165
Greeks, 9, 128
Greulich, Hermann, 160
296
Index
Grimm, Robert, 203

Groman, Ekaterina, 157, 160
Guarda, Lago di, 104, 106
Haase, Hugo, 153-4, 240-1
Habsburgs, 129, 132

Haenisch, Konrad, 82, 102-3, I 2 I J I54~5?
175-7, 194, 268, 270; biographical,
102; defence of H., 264-5; eulogy of
H., I; cited or quoted, 82, 124-5,

128,132
Haguenin, Professor, 271
Hahlweg, W., cited, 3
Haidamaki, 10, 17
Halle, 29
Hamburg- Amerika line, 220-1, 272
Hamburger Echo, 170
Handels og-Eksportkompagniet, 196-8
Hanecki: see Frstenberg, Jakob

Hankiewicz, Dr. Leo, 133, 135
Hanover congress (1899), 118
Harden, Maximilian, 128, 255, 263, 265
Havel, river, i, 266

Hebrew language, 7
Heilmann, Ernst, 175-6, 258
Heine, Wolfgang, 40, 46-47
Heinze, Consul, cited, 133
Helfand, Leon (alleged son of Helphand),

72-73
Helfferich, Karl, 2, 184, 203
HELPHAND, Alexander Israel (Parvus)

(see also subject headings throughout
the index), birth at Berezino (1867),
5, 7-8; original names Israel Lazarevich, 7; adopts name of Alexander,
8; descent and early life, 711;
family moves to Odessa after fire,

9-10; abroad for first time (1886),
11-12; leaves Russia (1887), 14;
wandering life abroad, 14-26; re-
visits Russia after twelve years (1899),

14, 52-55, 71; first meeting with
Lenin, 56; first meeting with Trotsky, 64; short illegal visit to Russia
(1902), 69; in Russia (1905), 70-72,
81-83, 90-99; arrested and banished

to Siberia (1906), 93-99, 103, 107;
escapes from Russia, 94,99-100,107;
returns to Germany (1906-1910),
102, 107, 111-13; moves to Vienna

(1910), 124-6; in Turkey (19101915), 126-44, 155; returns to Berlin
(1915), 143, 145-53; meeting with
Lenin, 157-9; in Copenhagen, 160-
8; offers services to Soviet govern-
ment, 239; seeks Lenin's permission

to return to Russia, 239, 245-7; request refused, 246-7; voluntary exile
in Switzerland (1918), 259-65; expelled from Switzerland (1920), 2666; returns to Berlin, 266-9; death
(1924), i, 245, 275; funeral, 276-7
Appearance, 23, 157
Assassination plot, 275
Business (see also Fortune, below), 15,
68-71, 196-205, 256, 259, 280-1;
charges against his integrity, 70-71,
124, 277; Gorki royalties affair: see
under Gorki
Character, 66-67, 70-74, 86, 92, 155-7,
204-5, 259; sketch, 276-81
Children, 4, 71-73, 106, 193; H.'s attitude to, 103
Citizenship: see that title
Critical articles about him in European
press, 256-7
'Dirty hands' reference (Lenin), 246
Education, 10-11, 16-19

Enigma of his life, 2-4
Family life, 68, 71-74, 193
Fortune, 127-9, 132, 143, 178, 193-4,

196-205, 259, 266, 280-1; early desire for riches, 66, 68; German payment to, 152, 155; legendary, 153,
157; tax payments, 198; size, 260;
position after his death, 276
Friends, attitude to his, 70-71, 121,

154,279
Germany, activities in: see under Germany
Health, rheumatism, 223, 256, 275;
failing, 275
'Intellectual partnership' with Trotsky,
64, 67, 111,278
Jewish background, 811, 14-15, 65
Journalist, as: see Journalist
Leader of men, failure as, 92, 121, 279
Marriages, 71, 106, 275
Munich police chief's report on, 58-59
Nicknames, 'The Seal', 20; 'Dr. Elefant', 23; 'The Russian' and 'Dr.
Barfuss', 34
Obituaries, 1-2
Papers, search for, 4; probable destruction, 4, 275-6
Parents, 8-9, 55, 117
Personal and political reformation,
Radek's statement refuted, 245-6
'Politically deceased' (Trotsky, 1915),
155-6. 173
Index
Private life, 68, 71-74, 106, 156-7, 166,
193,265-6,268-9,275,277
Pseudonyms, 'Ignatieff'and 'I. H.', 23;
'Unus', 28; 'Parvus', 29; 'August
Pen', 52; 'Karl Wawerk', 95; 'Peter
Klein', 102-3
Revolutionary faith, 11-13, 19-20, 93,
107, 152; obsessed with idea of revolution, 34-35, 39, 43, 48, 74
Russia, and: see under Russia
Russian identity, 15, 19, 21, 51
Secretiveness, desire for, 4
Self-confidence, 92, 129
Sons, 4, 71-73, 106,193
Subversive activities (see also under
countries concerned), 3, 130-69, 179,
181, 183-4, 188-91, 280; March
(1915) memorandum, 145, 151, 159,
186, 205; adviser to German government, 152; reply to charges, 174-5
Theorist, as, 41-42, 64, 92, 106, 113,
117
'Utopian and revolutionary dreamer'
(Helfferich), 203
Women, relations with, 106, 156-7,
166, 193,265,275,277
Written works (see also their titles), 4;
differences with publishers, 48; collected editions, 86-87; completes
two studies on ideology of socialism
(1910), 113, 117, 120-1; as writer,
277-9 (see also Journalist, H. as)
Helphand, Lazarus ('Zhenya') (son),
71-72
Helphand, Tanya (first wife), 71
Herding, Count von, 234
Herzen, Alexander, 6, 12-13, 159, 170
Hesnard, Professor, 271
Hessen, Grossherzog von, 150
Heuss, Theodor, 270, 272
Hilferding, Rudolf, 104
Hill, E., cited, 57
Hindenburg, Field-Marshal Paul von, 3
Hintze, Admiral, 254-5
Historical development, and revolution,
79, 114, 116, 118
Hitler, Adolf, 1, 2, 231, 249
Hglund, Zeth, 161-2
Holiday home for German children, 204
Holstein, 166
Holy War on Russia, 146
Hours of work, 36-37 (see also Eight-hour
day)
Huldermann, B., 200-1
Hlsen, Captain von, 230
297
Humanit^, 195, 227

Hungary, 322
Hungernde Russland, Das, 9, 14, 52, 54-55,
57
'I. H.' (pseudonym of H.), 23

'Ignatieff' (pseudonym of H.), 23
Im Kampf urn die Wahrheit (1918), 3-4,
256-7; cited or quoted, 4, 10-15, 21,
passim
Imperialism, 104-5, I J 4
In der russischen Bastille, 94-97, 107-8
Individual, rights of the, 119-20
Institute for the Study of the Social Consequences of the War (Copenhagen),
160-2, 164, 194-6, 204, 209, 227
Intelligentsia, Russian, 10-13, 19, 21, 95;
socialist, 22
International, Second, i, 2, 129, 156;
congresses (1889), 36; (1896), 50-51,
257; 0903), 65; collapse, 130
Internationale Korrespondenz, 139, 194, 258
Iskra, 56-59, 61-62, 64-65, 84, 87, 133
Italy, 5, 143; H.'s holidays in, 104, 106,
123; socialists, 20
Izvestia, 90
Izvne,251,253,255
Jackh, Ernst, 272, 274

Jagow, Gottlieb von, 145, 190, 211-12
Jansson, Wilhelm, 175-6, 203, 212-13
Japan, 62-63, 105,254
Jaures,Jean, 35
Jews, 128, 148, 195, 265; antisemitism, 7,
46; H.'s Jewish background, 8-11,
14-15, 65; pogroms, 7, 14; in Russia, 6-10, 23; socialist Bund, 143, 147
Journalist, Helphand as, 23-40, 48, 8384, 103, 107, 112-13, 124, 126, 128,
130, 132; editorships, 30-32, 47, 51;
writes for Russian press, 58; featureagency, 68; founds Die Glocke (1915),
168-72, 176-7; purchases Internationale Korrespondenz (q.v.), 194; return
to journalism (1920), 270; new
economics newspaper, 271-5
Jugoslavia, 262
Kaden (publisher), 108
Kaiserhof, Hotel (Berlin), 193, 266, 271
Kama, river, 54
Karakozov, D., 6
Karski: see Marchlewski, Julian
Kasparov, 158
Katkov, G., cited, 3
298 Index
Kautsky, Karl, 28, 31, 35, 38-40, 74,
115-16, 124, 141, 153, ijo, i73-4>
176; biographical, 22-23; H.'s relations with, 22-23, 26-27, 45-48,
73, 107, 177, 263-4; and Lenin, 6162; help for H.'s wife, 71; Rosa
Luxemburg and, 98, 115; and 1 rotsky, 108-9
Kazan, 54
Kerensky, A. F., 221, 225-7, 229, 232-3,
236
Kessler, Count Harry, cited, 271
Khitraya Mekhanika, 12
Kiderlen-Wachter, A. von, 190
Kiefer, Karl, 198-9
Kiev, 14,81
Kievskqya Mysl, 126
Kirkov, Georgi, 140
Klassenkampf des Proletariats, Der (1911),
113-16,118
Klein, Peter (pseudonym of H.), 102-3
Klingsland, Fabian (Petrograd firm),
197-8
Kbenhaven, 256
Kbenhavns Befragtnings~og Transport-Kompagniet, 200
Kollontay, Alexandra, 181,225-6
Koln congress (1893), 36
Kolokol, 170
Kon, Feliks, cited, 11
Korrespondenz Prawda, 219, 227-8
Kovno, 53
Kozak, Professor, 18
Kozlovsky, 163, 180, 221, 225-6, 246
Krasnoyarsk, 99
Kreuzzeitung,I
Krull, 275
Krupp concern, 128
Krupskaya, N. K., 57, 59, 71, 158, 209
Kruse, Alfred, 161,181
Krustalev-Nostar, G., 84, 89
Kuba: see Frstenberg, Jakob
Kuban cossacks, 146
Kuhlmann, R. von, 2, 230-1, 240, 243-4,
254
Kundert, Fritz, 29
Labour, division of, H.'s thesis on, 18

Ladyzhnikov, I. P., 122-3
Land rents, 41
Languages, 7, 9
Langwerth von Simmern, Baron, 184,
197,199,207
Larsen, Professor Karl, 195
Lassalle, Ferdinand, 44-45,67, 74
Lassallians, 21
Lavrov, P. L., 25
Legien, Carl, 223
Lehmann, Dr. C., 9, 14, 52-55, 57, 71
Leipzig, 26, 30-32, 56; H.'s illegal visit
(1905), 82
Leipziger Volkszeitung, 30-32, 38, 82, 102,
170, 175, 266; cited, 32, 36, 114
'Leman, Dr.', 57 (see Lehmann, Dr. C.)
Lenin, V. I., 55-62, 67, 71, 75, 79-80,
105, 150, 161-3, 224; in Siberia, 48,
57, 94; and H.'s works, 48, 57; first
meetings with H., 56-57; correspondence from Russia sent to addresses of German socialists, 57;
leader of Bolsheviks, 3, 122, 142,
147-8, 162, 216, 218; campaign to
capture party control, 59-62; and
Trotsky, 65, 108; returns to Russia
(1905), 82-83, 86, 93-94; and Gorki
affair, 122-4; H.'s meeting with
(1915), 157-9; lack of money, 165,
181, 221; criticism of Die Glocke, 1789, 229; transit across Germany
('sealed train', 1917), 2, 209-11,216;
in Stockholm, 215-6; relations with
H., 216-7, 228-9, 232, 24.7, 280;
journey to Petrograd, 217; treason
charges after July rising (1917),
225-30; goes into hiding, 226, 228;
Soviet government, 236-8, 244-5,
250-1; request from H. for permission to return to Russia, 239, 245-6;
Lenin's reply ('dirty hands' reference), 246-8, 253
Leninskii Sbornik, cited, 161, 210, 247
Lensch, Paul, 82, 102, 155, 175-6, 194
'Letters to the German Workers', 262
Liberals, 44-45, 60, 63, 67-68, 75, 83-85,
87-88
Liebknecht, Karl, 115, 140, 154, 170,
173,228
Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 21, 25, 27, 33-34?
39-40, 192
Liman von Sanders, General, 136
Listok Pravda, 226
Lithuania and Lithuanians, 7, 147
Litwak, A., cited, 156
Locarno treaty, 273
London, H. in (1896), 50-51, 257; Jews,
7; Second International congresses,
50-51,65,257
London School of Economics, 272
Lbeck congress (1901), 45-49, 68
Lubersac, Marquis de, 274
Index
Lucius von Stdten, 203, 253
Ludendorff, General Erich von, 2, 3, 202,
234
Ludwigshafen, 4.6
Lunacharsky, A. V., 155
Luther, Martin, 47
Luxemburg, Rosa, 20-21, 35, 46-47, 98,
102,104, 115-16, 126, 140, 156, 173;
H.'s relations with, 26, 43, 47, 50,
106, 108, 120-1, 126, 154,251,267;
articles in press, 32-33; and Lenin,
57, 62, 251; break with party, 153;
quoted, 33-34, 98, 177-8
Lvov, 132
Madsen, Karl, 199
Malm, 215-16
Marchlewski, Dr. Julian (Karski), 20-21,
26, 32, 47, 58; biographical, 69;
titular head of publishing house,
68-71,82, 121, 123
Marienbad, 223-34, 275
Marinescu, Dimitru, 137-8
Marne offensive, 150
Marriage, Russian students' attitude to, 17
Martov, J., 48, 55, 61, 82-84, 112, 142,
155; cited, 57,160-1
Marx, Karl, 38, 45, 117, 173, 278; Communist Manifesto, 12-14, 39; Das
Kapital, 5, 12; forecast of periodic
economic crises, 38,41
Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, 81, 142
Marxism and Marxists, 28, 31, 34, 38,
41-42, 48, 74, 101, 109, 117, 139,
171, 236; H. and, 16-18, 21, 25, 34,
43, 64, 278; publishing house for
literature, 122; revisionism: see that
title; revolutionary doctrine, 48, 64,
78-79; Russian Marxism, 12-14, 25,
50, 56; Trotsky and, 65
Mass strike, political: see Strike
Matin, 256
May Day parade, 59
Mayer, Gustav, 220
Mehring, Franz, 102, 140, 153, 177
Meine Antwort an Kerenski und Co., 229,
232-3
Melenevski, Marian Basok-, 133-5, 156,
J
75
Melgunov, P. S., cited, 135,180, 239
Mensheviks, 79-80, 83-84, 87-88, 143,
160-1, 181,223;H. and, 79,80, 112;

split with Bolsheviks, 59-62, 65, 122,
137, 147, 158; Trotsky and, 65, 6768,76
299
Mercedes (firm), 272

Mezhrayontsy, 180
Michahelles, von, 141
Middle class, 67-68, 74, 77-79, 85, 8788, 110, 174; parties, 44-45, 101
Mikhailovski, N. K., 10
Military vehicles, export of, 259
Mill, John S., 10, 18
Milyukov, P. N., 225
Minsk province, 7
Mittag, Freiherr von, 133
Money, and political power, 128-9, 281
Monopolies, 113, 117
Moor, Karl, 220, 231
Moscow, 139, 179, 188; police chief's report on strikes (1899), 51; H. in,
53-55; strikes and unrest (1905), 89,
91-92, 122
Moslems, 146
Motteler, G., 87
Mudie, D., cited, 57
Mller, Adolf, 171, 206-7, 233, 261, 265
Mller, Hermann, 223
Mnchener Post, 171
Munich, 82, 123; H. in, 26, 48, 51-52,
54-59, 64-71, 76, 110, 113, 170-1,
194, 259; police chief's report on H.,
58-59; Trotsky in, 64-68, 76, no
Munich Polytechnic, 220
Munich University, 58
Muraviev, Rear-Admiral, 188
Mursikha, 54
Muzhiki, 88, 99
'My Reply to Kerensky and Co.', 229,
232-3
Nachalo, 84, 88, 90
Nadolny, R., 2
Narodnaia Volya, 11, 17, 20
Narodniki, 25
Nash Golos, 90
Nashe Slovo (earlier Golos, q.v.), 142, 148,
155, 180,227
Nationalism, 134, 145-6
Nationalization, 118-9, 120, 251
Naturalization, H.'s search for: see Citizenship
Naumann, Victor, 233-4
Nazis, 1, 249,265
Near East, 126-7,143
Nestl firm, 225
Netherlands, 197, 222
Neue Zeit, 22-23, 26-29, 45-46, 48, 87,
107-8, 141, 170, 176; cited, 28-29,
31-32,35,45,120
300 Index
Neue Zrcher Zeitung, 265
New York, Jews, 7
Nicholas II, Tsar, 75, 80, 82, 85, 89, 179,
184-5, 207; and separate peace, 1512, 167, 181-2, 185
Niekisch, Ernst, 270
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 16
Nicholas Nikolaevich, Grand Duke, 151
Nikolaev, 149, 188-9
Nikolaevski, B. I., cited, 44, 60-62, 112
Nizhni Novgorod, 54
Nobel, Alfred, 5
Northcliffe, Lord, 254
Norway, 203
Novaya Zhizn, 83, 90, 227
Move Vreme, 140
'November criminals', 2, 265
Nye Bank, 226
Obukhov works, 147

Odessa, 9-10, 14-15, 65, 141, 148-9, 188,
219
Okhrana,227
Ollenhauer, Erich, 270
'Opportunism in Practice', 45,48-49
Opposition Parties, dissolution of, 120
Orenburg, 54
Orlovsky: see Vorovski, V. V.
Otto, 195
'Pale', The, 6-7, 9
Palestine, 7
Pallavicini, 133, 135-6
Paris, Russian exiles in, 155
'Parvulus', 102, 177 (see Haenisch, Konrad)
Parvus (pseudonym of Alexander Israel
HELPHAND,q.v.),29
'Parvusists', 81, 117, 142
Passports, forged, 52-53, 55, 82, 95, 99,
217; Bulgarian, used by Lenin,
57
Peace, proposed separate peace with
Russia, 150-2, 167-9, 181-2, 185,
206-9, 211, 213-5, 217-9, 236-9,
242-5; Reichstag resolution, 223;
Brest-Litovsk negotiations and treaty
(1918), 243-4, 248-9, 252-3, 280;
H.'s publicity campaign to end the
war, 258; Versailles treaty, 262, 272,
274
Peace conference, Socialist: see Socialist
peace conference
Peasants, 10-11, 13-14, 24, 31, 34, 77, 89,
99, 207
Peasants' Union, 89
'Pen, August' (pseudonym of H.), 52
Perasich, Vladimir Davidovich, 160
Persia and Persians, 9, 254
Petrograd (earlier St. Petersburg, q.v.),
197-8, 248, 250, 253; revolution
(1917), 206-7, 209-10, 213-14, 21722, 224-6, 229, 235-6, 239, 280
'Philistines About Me', 71, 73

Piashev, N., cited, 220
Plekhanov, G. V., 13-15, 20, 24-25, 48,
50,55-56, 65, 83, 140
Pobedonostsev, K., 6
Pogroms, 7, 14
Poland and Poles, 7, 50, 69, 196, 213, 250,
262; exiles, 20-21, 161-3; independence, 140; social democrats, 147;
students in Germany, 58; underground workers, 220, 227-8
Political economy, 16, 18
Population, Minsk, 7
Populists, 12, 25,60
Possony, St. T., cited, 3
Poster company, 196
Potresov, A. N., 48, 50, 55-56; cited, 44,
60-62,112
Pravda, 2, 161, 227, 231, 239, 245

'Present Political Situation ...', 92-93
Press (see also under names of newspapers), relations with party, 33;
publication of Russian socialist newspaper abroad (Iskra, q.v.) (1900),
56-57; H.'s desire to ifound newspaper, 68; feature-agency, 68-69,
127; first popular daily, 83; circulations, 83; censorship dropped, 86;
newspapers confiscated, 90; campaign against Russia, 145, 147-8,
250-1; Die Glocke (q.v.) founded
(1915), 168-72; H.'s plan for 'large
scale organization', 253-6; help
from H., 269; newspaper on economics, 271-5
Preussische fitting, 264
Princip, Gavrilo, 129
Printing-press, illegal, 57
Prison life in Russia, 93-99, 107
Private ownership, 119
Progressive groups, 44
Proletariat, and acquisition of power, 65,
75~77> 79-8o, 87, no, 251; arming,
206; avant-garde mission in world

revolution, 64, no; class, and, 63,
79; international, 235, 239; organization, 36; position in state, 44, 66,
Index
119; social revolution, and, 45, 64,
67-68, 75-77? 84-85, 88, 102, in,

114-15, 172; voice of, 47
Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya, cited, 221
Protective tariffs, 104-5, 113
Provisional workers' government, necessity for, 76-80, 84, 117
Prussia (State), 21, 178; Helphand expelled from (1893), 25-27, 71; illegal visits to, 102, 113; expulsion
order withdrawn (1915), 152; granted citizenship (1916), 27, 192-4, 212,
241; 'Privy Councillors', 37; Rakovsky expelled from, 126; suffrage
issue and (1893), 27-28, 116
Pskov, 53
Publishing, H.'s publishing houses, 6971, 82, 123, 171, 194, 256, 268, 276;
attempts to set up house for Marxist
literature in Berlin, 122; H.'s expanding activities, 194-6; almanacks
plan, 254-5,263-5
'Pundyk': see Sklarz, Heinrich
Putilov works, 147, 189
301
Revisionism, 37-48, 57, 113, 117, 139,

i70,i76
Revolution, H.'s views, 34-45, 48, 64-66,

76-81, 110-11, 114-19, 132, 151-3,
157; historical process, as, 79, 114,
116, 118; offensive tactics, 37, 39,
116; permanent, 96, 110-11; Soviet
appropriation for support in Western Europe (1917), 250; Trotsky and,

65-68, 96, iio-n; war and, 62-64,
114
Revolutionary democracy, 80
Revolutions:
European (1848), 44, 67, 77
German, not expected until end of war,
214-15, 236, 244, 253, 258-9; outbreak (November 1918), 259, 262-3,
267, 280
Russian (1905), 70, 72, 75-100, 107-10,
117, 121, 146, 183
Russian (1917), 120, 206-28, 234-45,
249-50, 267, 281
Rheinland-Westfalen, 103
Rhine, 15-16, 31
Riezler, Dr. Kurt, 145, 240-1, 243-4, 24^
Riga, 183
Rabotnichesky Vestnik, 130
Radek, Karl, 20, 105, 215, 217, 252-3; Roland-Hoist, Henrietta, 35
Romberg, Gisbert Freiherr von, 191, 229
biographical, 156; and H., 2, 156,
217, 227-8, 238-41, 245^8, 279; in Rosenberg, Alfred, 2, 146, 265
Bolshevik bureau in Stockholm, Rossiya i revolyutsiya, 62-64, 67, 87, 92
219-21, 227-8, 235; puts H.'s re- Ruberrimus: see Heilmann, Ernst
Ruhr, 102, 202, 273-4
quest to return to Russia before
Lenin, 239, 245-8, 253; 'political Rumania, 126, 130-1, 137-9, 141, 148,
harlequin', 248
'55>257
Rakovsky, Christo, 57, 126-7, 137-9, *55> Rus, 88
Rusanov, N. S., 25, 223
171,246
Ruskaya Gazeta, 83
Rantzau: see Brockdorff-Rantzau
Russia (see also subject headings throughRapallo treaty, 273
out the index):
Rapaport, Charles, 20
Agriculture, area under cultivation,
Rathenau, Walter, 118, 274
224
Rauscher, Ullrich, 268
Amnesty for political offenders (1905),
Rech, 225
82
Reconstruction, 272-5
Anarchy, 208, 224
Red Cross, 52
Army, low morale, 179-80, 224; propa'Red postmaster', 87
ganda campaign in, 183-4, 2 I 9> 22 6;
Reichstag, 37, 41, 121, 175, 241, 243, 274;
and revolution, 207-8; collapse
peace resolution, 223; Social Demolikely, 236; Red Army, 251
crats in, 43-44, 112, 221; vice-presiBanking, threatened withdrawal of
dency (1903), 43-44
deposits, 89-90; State, 247, 250-1
Reichstag Elections and the Working Class,
Bolsheviks: see that title
103-4
Coal, from Germany, 256
Reinhardt, Max, 70
Constituent Assembly, 161,207, 232
Reparations, 270-1, 273-4
Constitutional system, 6, 75, 78, 80, 97
Reuss, Duchy of, 47
Europe, and, 24-25,84-85, 101
Renter, Ernst, 270
302 Index
Russia (continued):
Exiles: see Russian exiles
Famines, 24-25, 52, 54-55
Financial manifesto (1905), 89-90
French loans, 54
Germany, relations with, 3, 137, 145-7,
150-1; suggested alliance with, 105;
promised loan, 243; German economic penetration, 253-4, 256; treaty
with (1922), 273; trade with, 164-5,
197-8
Helphand, birth and early life in, 5, 714; leaves Russia (1887), 14; Russian identity, 15, 19, 21, 51; revisits
after twelve years (1899), J 4> 52~55>
71; short illegal visit (1902), 69; returns to (1905), 70-72, 81-83, 90-99;
fare paid from advance royalties, 82;
leadership (with Trotsky) of workers'
movement, 83-93; arrested and
banished to Siberia (1906), 93-99,
103, 107; escapes from Russia, 94,
99-100, 107; possible later visits,
128; permission sought to return
(!9i7) 239 245-7; request refused,
246-7
Jewry :see Jews
Land, 207, 232, 236
Military offensive against, possible,
207-8, 211, 214-15, 219, 249
Money market, action against, 183-4
National Assembly, 236
Navy, 208
Occupation by Germans, proposed, 208
Parliament, 6, 77, 80, 85, 213
Press, H.'s plan, 254-6
Provisional government, 76-80, 84,
117, 220, 225, 227-8, 230-3
Radicals, 6, 13
Reform, era of, 5-6
Revolutionary movement, 6-7, 25,
50-52, 56-60, 64-68, 137, 149, 17791; Germany and, 2, 167; H. adviser to German Government, 152;
money for, 180, 184, 186-7,190,
198; organizations, 179-80, 182
Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 : see under Revolutions
Social Democrat party: see Social
Democrat party, Russian
Soviet Union, 2, 3
Soviets: see that title
Strikes (1899), 51; (1905), 7, 75> 81,
86-92, 182; planned for January
1916, 147, 149, 169, 179-81, 186;
failure described, 187-90, 198, 203

Students, in Switzerland, 16-17; in
Germany, 58-59
Subversive activities against, 3, 130-7,
145-69, 175, 177, 179-91, 220, 226,
280; plan for direct military action
against, 133-6; H.'s memorandum
(March 1915), 145, 151, 159, 186,
205; H. adviser to German Government, 152; money for, 152, 180, 1867, 220, 226, 229, 231-2, 235-6
Terrorism, 6, 53
Tsar: see Nicholas II
Tsarism: see that title
Underground agitators, 75, 86
University disturbances, 51-52, 59
World market and, 41
'Russia and the Revolution': see Rossiya i
revolyutsiya
'Russian, The' (nickname for H.), 34
Russian exiles, 56-57, 64-65, 134, 155-6,
217; H. and, 19-20, 48-51, 55, 68,
112, 141-2, 160-1, 164; some return
to Russia, 52, 82-83, 86; differences
among, 60-62, 80-81; attitude to
revolution, 75, 206; extradition
from Germany, 102, 112; in Siberia,
147; plans to facilitate flight to European Russia, 147; money for, 155,
157; recruitment of, 160-4, 194;
transit through Germany, 2, 209
12,215-16
Russian language, 7, 9
Russian Union of Sailors, 127, 148
Russian Workers' and Soldiers' Council,
218, 222
Russo-Japanese War, 62-63, 149, 185
Ruthenes, 132
Ryazanov, D. B., 81, 141-3,180
Schsische Arbeiterzeitung, 32-35, 38-40,
47-48,51,87,232,267
St. Petersburg (taterPetrograd, q.v.)} 147,
157, 179-81, 183, 187-9; 'bloody

Sunday' (1905), 75-76, 180, 188;
Helphand in (1899), 53-54, (1905-
6), 70-72, 81-83, 94-95, 98-99, 106;

leadership (with Trotsky) of workers'
movement, 83-93; revolution (1905),
75-76, 83-95, 101, 142; strikes, 8586, 91, 147, 180, 188-9; student
disturbances (1899), 5!-52J 59
Saints Peter and Paul Fortress, St. Petersburg, 53, 90, 96, 110
Salomon, Ernest von, cited, 275
Index
303
Saltykov, M. Y. (N. Schedrin), 10-11

Siemens, Carl Friedrich von, 272
Siemens-Schuckert (firm) ,219
Samara province, 45
Simbirsk, 54
Sarajevo, 129
Saxony, 34; H. expelled from (1898), 47, Simmern: see Langwerth von Simmern,
51, 71; breaches of expulsion, 82, 113
Baron
Scandinavia, 159-68, 181, 195, 198,212, Singer, P., 109, 153
Sisson, Edgar, 232
219-25,233,247,259
Sklarz, Georg, 196-7, 199, 201, 204, 210,
Scavenius, Eric, 201-3
Schapiro, Leonard, cited, 60
263
Sklarz, Heinrich, 196-7
Scharlau, Winfried, cited, 79
Sklarz3 Waldemar, 196-7
Schedrin, N.: see Saltykov, M. Y.
Scheidemann, Philipp, 153, 155, 158, Skobelev, M. I., 221
218, 223, 237, 239-41, 262-3, 265,Slavery, 18
268, 270; H. not mentioned in re- Slavs, 148, 151
miniscences, 4; journey to Copen- Smirnov, Gurevich-, 180
hagen (1917), 213-6; Stockholm Smirnov, Timofei, 90, 223
visit, 243-4; Prime Minister of Smith, Adam, 18
Weimar Republic, 255, 262; cited, Smuggling, 87, 197
Social Democrat party, German, 20-25,
213-5; 235*237
Schillinger, Alexander (son of Helphand),
27-48, 59, 63, 78, 103-10, 117, 137,
183, 263
193
Agrarian agitation, 31-32, 34, 38
Schillinger, Frau Maria, 193
Bismarck's anti-socialist laws, 21, 37
Scholz, Arno, 269
Budget support, and, 28-30
Schnlank, Bruno, 30-33, 83, 121
Committee, 218
Schnlank, Bruno (junior), 266-9
Congresses, 34-35; H. defends himself
Schwabing, Munich, H.'s residence, 57,
before, 40-41; H. never a delegate,
66,71,76
Schwanenwerder, Berlin, H.'s residence,
121; (1875), 21, 74; (1893), 36;
(1894), 29, 31; (1895), 32; (1896),
1,4,266-9,271,275,277
'Scientific' socialist, 1718, 39
36-37; (1897), 37; (1898), 40-41,
Scutari, 127
154; (1899), 118; (1901), 45-49, 68;
'Seal, The' (nickname for H.), 20
(1903), 37, 44
Elections, and, 27-28, 80, 101, 103-4
'Sealed train' journey: see under Lenin
Second International: see International,
Executive, 27, 34, 36-37, 40-41, 45, 48
Helphand and, 2, 20, 25-27, 34-40,
Second
46-48,50, 106, 112-4, 121, 153-5,
Second World War, 3
212, 256, 259; essay on, 172-4; acts
Sedova, Natalia, 66, 76, 108
as representative, 216-8; and the
Semenon, Viktor, 90
younger generation, 269; party's
Serbia, 126
memory of, 276
Sergei, Grand Duke, 59
Leaders, 22, 153-4; of right wing, 193Serrati, Geaccinto, 143
4; in Copenhagen, 213-6
Sevastopol, 69
Newspapers and periodicals, 22-23, 25
Severnyi Golos, 90
Revisionism, and: see that title
Shevchenko, T., 10
Russians, and, 25, 58-59, 108, 213-6,
Shipping-lines, 200
Shlyapnikov, Alexander, 162, 181
233,237-44, 252
Three-way split, 115
Shop signs, pictorial, 54
Shub, David, cited, 155
Two factions (S.P.D. and U.S.P.D.),
238,240-1
Siberia, banishment to, 52, 56, 81, 93-94,
98, 102, 112; Lenin in, 48, 57, 94; Social Democrat party, Russian, 3, 58,
Trotsky escapes from, 65, 108; H.
75-83, 135, 147-8
Germans and, 25, 58-59, 108
escapes from (1906), 94, 98-99, 107;
Gorki royalties for funds: see under Gorki
political exiles in, 147
Helphand's relations with, 48-49, 55,
Siberian Bank, 226
Siefeldt,A., 158
74
304
Index
Social Democrat party (continued):
Leaders return to Russia, 82-83, 86

Newspaper abroad, 55-57 (see Iskra)
Split (1903) between Bolsheviks and
Mensheviks, 59-62, 65, 80-81, 122,
137, 141, 147, 158
Social Revolutionaries, 11, 60, 161
Socialdemocrat (Stockholm), 244
Socialdemokrat (Copenhagen), 213
Socialism, and world revolution, 85; H.'s
attitude to, 111, 268, 278-9; ideology
of, 113-4, 117; in practice after
revolution, 117-21, 130; and war,
129-31; collapse of pre-war, 130 (see
also Europe: Socialists)
Socialist conference, International (Berne,
1919), 261
Socialist congress of unity, proposed, 147,
149,153
Socialist peace conference (Stockholm,
1917), 221-5
Socialist peace conference, proposed,
242-5, 248, 252
Sofia, 133,135,139-41, 143,148
Solomon, G. A., cited, 256
Sotsial-Democrat, 178
Soviet Encyclopedia, 3
Soviet National Bank, 165
Soviet Union, 2, 3
Soviets, (1905), 81, 83-98; (1917)5 93,
213, 218, 221-3, 227, 232, 249-56;
in Germany (1918), 262
Sozialdemokratische Feldpost, 194
Soziale Bilanz des Krieges, Die (1917), 195
Spartakists, 261-3
Spartakusbltter, 178
Spilka, the, 147
Staat9 die Industrie, und der Sozialismus, Der
(1910), 113-14, 117, 119-20
Stadthagen, 40
Stalin, J. V., 126, 139, 161
State, Industry, and Socialism, The (1910),
113-4,117,119-20
Stauning, Thorvald, 223, 242-3
Stern, L., cited, 57, 59
Stettin, 200
Stinnes, Hugo, 200-1, 273-4
Stockholm, 139, 159, 161, 163, 165, 226,
229, 238-48, 258; H. in, 187, 189,
219, 238-48, 250, 253; Russian exiles
in, 215-17; Bolshevik Foreign Mission, 219-21, 227-9, 231, 235, 238,
245
Stockholm conference (1917), 221-5

Straits, 167
Strauss, Johann, 5
Strike, Political Mass, 35-36, 66, 68, 7576,89, 113, 115-16, 149, 169, 186
Strobel, Heinrich, 154
Struve, P., 79
Stuttgart, 22-23, 26-27, 54, 57, 113
Stuttgart congress (1898), 40-41, 154
Sublime Porte: see Turkey
Subversive activities: see under Helphand;
and under countries concerned
Sdekum, A.O.W., 138, 154, 194
Sumenson, Evgeniya, 197, 225-6
Sweden (see also Stockholm), 139, 146,
161, 203, 215, 233, 235, 260
Switzerland, 87, 147, 220, 233
Coal business, 203
General strike, 261
Helphand in, 8, (1886), 12, 14, 55;
(1887-1891), 14-21; (1915), 156-60;
(1917), 224-5 ,229; (1918) voluntary
exile, 259-65; arrested and released,
261; campaign against, 261-5; expelled from, 265-6; alleged deposit
of money in, 276
Lenin in, 142, 209, 215
Russian exiles, 136, 141-2, 148, 155-6,
181,215
Tarnowski, Count, 135
Tasviri Efkar, 129, 133
Tatars, 9
Tax, strike, 89; H.'s payments, 198
Technische Organization ..., 18
Technological Institute, St. Petersburg, 86
Telegraph (Berlin), 269
Temps, Le, 256

Terrorism and terrorists, 11, 60, 275
Theatre tickets, H.'s purchase of, 86
Thun, Alphonse, 16
Tirpitz, Admiral von, 150
Tpffer, Dr., 199, 201-2
Trade cycles, 117
Trade unions, 33, 58, 176; H.'s views on,
36, i n , 113-4, 117, 119-20, 183;
Danish, 198-202, 233
Trading and Export Company, 196-8
Trans-Siberian Railway, 54, 99
Trier, Sven, 195
Trotsky, Lev Davidovich Bronstein, 3,6468, 75-76, 108, 125-6, 142, 160-1,
227, 237, 244, 252; biographical, 6566; H.'s first meeting with (1904), 64;
friendship with H., 57, 64-67, 76,
83-84, 108-11, 129, 267, 278-9;
'intellectual partnership' with H.,
Index
305
64, 67, i n , 278; Do devyatovo Tan- Vodrovsvej (Copenhagen), H.'s resivarya, 66, 76-79; returns to Russia
dence, 193,214
(1905). 76, 81-84, 86-89, 92-93; Volga, river, 54
imprisonment, 94, 96; escapes from
Vollmar, Georg von, 22, 28, 30-31, 43Siberia, 108; 'Prospects and Per45,48
spectives', 110-11, 172; 'Epitaph Vorovski, V. V., 219-20, 229, 238, 243-5
for a Living Friend' (on H.), 155-6,
Vorwrts, 2, 3-5, 27-28, 32-33, 38, 52,
173, 227; again returns to Russia
107-8, 154, 170, 232-3, 270; cited,
(1917), 180,226
24,25,238-9,275
'Trotskyism', 66
Vperiod, 79, 81
Tsarism, collapse of regime, 206; EuroVriadakh germanskoe sotsial-demokratii, 87
pean socialists and, 168-9; financial
abuses, 89; Germany and, 178, 182,

185; Helphand's views on, 20, 63,
77, 82, 97, 108, 130-4, 140, 173-4,
182, 280; Lenin and, 157; middle
class and, 77, 79, 88; subversion
against, 132-4, 136-7, 145-52, 191,
280; Trotsky on, 94
Tschirschky, von, 143

TurkTurdu, 128
Turkey (Sublime Porte), 5, 9, 125, 136,
146, 163, 175; Capitulations, 126,
129; H.'s stay in (1910-1915), 12644; H.'s investments in, 198, 260,
281; war, and, 132, 168; Young
Turks, 128, 175
Turuchansk, 99
U-boat warfare, 202
Ukraine and Ukrainians, 7, 9-10, 140,
146-7, 207, 226, 230, 250; Union for
Liberation, 132-6, 153, 156, 175
Ukrainian language, 9
Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine:
see Ukraine
United States of America: see America
United States of Europe, 42
Unus (pseudonym of H.), 28
Urban, Consul, 135
Uritsky, Moisei, 161-2, 180-1
Uspenski, G., 10-11
Vandervelde, E.,281
Verlag fr
Sozialwissenschaft,
171, 194,
276
Verlag slawischer und nordischer Literatur,

69-71, 82, 123
Versailles conference and treaty, 262, 272,
274
Vienna, 27, 126, 132-3, 135, 148, 161; H.
in, 124-6, 141-3, 234-5; Trotsky in,
109,111
Vishinsky, A., 139
Vlachov, 127
Wdenswil (Zrich), H.'s residence, 260,

262,265, 268
Wakefield,E. G., 18
Walther, V. G. A., 199
Wangenheim, Freiherr von, 136-7
Wannsee lake, 1, 4, 266, 268, 271
War, and revolution, 62-64, 114; capitalism and, 63, 104, 114; colonial
policy and, 104; socialists and, 129-
31; H.'s views on, 130-1

War, Great: see First World War
War credits, 153, 175
War surplus material, 72, 259

Warsaw, 54, 106, 169
Warszawski-Warski, Adolf, 21
'Wawerk, KarP (pseudonym of H.), 95
Weimar Republic, 2, 231, 262-3, 265,
268-70, 275-6
Wels, Otto, 268
Wiederaufbau, 272-5
Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 3, 169, 225

Wilhelm, Crown Prince, 150, 234
Wilmersdorf, 276
Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, 75

Wirth,J., 274
Witte, Count, 89
Wolffsche Telegraphen Bureau, 232
Women, H.'s relations with: see under
Helphand
Workers' councils (see also Soviets), 90, 93
Workers' democracy, 77-78, 84-85, 93,
no, 246, 252
Workers' movement, international, 172
World market, 41-42, 63,85, 104-5,110,
113-4,257
World revolution, 20, 85, 110, 114

Wrttemberg, 27
Yenise province, 99
Yiddish, 7
Yogiches. Leo, 21, 106, 154
Young plan, 273
Young Turks, 128, 175
306 Index
Zaharoff, Sir Basil, 128
Zapta, 130
Zarya, 49
Zasulich, Vera, 14, 20, 50, 52, 82
Zechlin, E., cited, 151
Zeiss camera, 54
Zeman, Z. A. B., cited, 3, 137-8, 145,
147-9 passim
Zetkin, Clara, 2, 22-23, 40, 124, 154
Zhargorodski, 11
Zhenya: see Helphand, Lazarus (son)
Zhub, D.: see Shub, David

Zimmer, Dr. Max, 134-6, 145, 163-6, 168
Zimmerman, A., 151, 184, 192, 203, 2114,217-9,230
Zinoviev, G., 210, 226
nanie, 70
Zukunft, Die, 255, 263
Zurabov, 180, 195
Zrich, 19, 21, 153, 160, 210, 215; H. in,

12, 14-15, 17, 26, 156-7, 260-1, 265
Zrich Polytechnic, 18

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THE MERCHANT OF REVOLUTION

Alexander Helphand. Drawing by Walter Bondy

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4

Z. A. B. ZEMAN and W. B. SCHARLAU 1965

Printed in Great Britain

For F. W. Deakin and E. Lehnartz

2. The Great Fortune

3. The Schwabing Headquarters

4. St. Petersburg, 1905

5. Strategist without an Army

7. Between the Socialists and the Diplomats

8. Not by Money Alone

9. Business and Politics

10. Revolution in Russia

Karl Kautsky, 1905

Helphand, Trotsky, and Lev Deutsch in the Saints

Helphand and Deutsch on the way to exile in Siberia,

VI Rosa Luxemburg and Helphand

X Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, Gottlieb von

XI Richard von Kuhlmann and Count Czernin, 1917

Philipp Scheidemann speaking outside the Reichstag,

The Nature of the Enigma

His obituaries lightly glossed over a life of extraordinary

The Merchant of Revolution

became a traitor to the working class, a German chauvinist, a

Clara Zetkin, in Die Kommunistische Internationale, No. I, January 1925.

Introduction: The Nature of the Enigma

enemies of the German people who had destroyed Imperial

The Merchant of Revolution

my literary works as with milestones. From one year to another,

Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, p. 45.

The Merchant of Revolution

autocracy. In an age when new sections of the hitherto apolitical

Disengagement from Russia 7

was tolerated and sometimes even encouraged by the Tsarist

The Merchant of Revolution

Disengagement from Russia 9

The destruction by fire of the Helphands' house was followed

The Merchant of Revolution

Such accomplishments were not taught at Russian schools:

Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, Berlin, 1918, pp. 4-5.

Disengagement from Russia

by profession, whose vitriolic satire ridiculed the bureaucracy;

FeliksKon, Za piatdesat let, Moscow, 1936, vol. 3, p. 254.

The Merchant of Revolution

not available in Russia, and many of the revolutionary leaders

The accumulation of a large body of literature of an unusual kind

the translation of the first volume of Das Kapital, by Nikolai

emerge as a movement until some ten years later. In 1882, a year

tion of his Communist Manifesto of 1848, in which he attempted to

ibid., pp. 5-6.

Disengagement from Russia

He knew that the peasant commune, a form of primitive collective

The Merchant of Revolution

Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, p. 6.

Disengagement from Russia

fashioned literary critics to tackle. He felt a desire to get away

Im Kampf um die Wahrheit, p. 7.

The Merchant of Revolution

Karl Bucher, Lebenserinnerungen, 1847-1890, Tubingen, 1919, vol.

Disengagement from Russia 17

F.Brupbacher, 60 Jahre Ketzer, Zrich, 1935, p. 53.